Neil Oliver tells the epic story of how Britain and its people came to be over thousands of years of ancient history - the beginnings of our world forged in ice, stone, and bronze.
A History Of Ancient Britain will turn the spotlight onto the very beginning of Britain’s story. From the last retreat of the glaciers 12,000 years ago, until the departure of the Roman Empire in the Fifth Century AD this epic series will reveal how and why these islands and nations of ours developed as they did and why we have become the people we are today. The first series transmits in early 2011 and the following series A History of Celtic Britain in April 2011.
A History of Ancient Britain (1 / 4) - Age of Ice
A History of Ancient Britain (2 / 4) - Age of Ancestors
A History of Ancient Britain (3 / 4) - Age of Cosmology
A History of Ancient Britain (4 / 4) - Age of Bronze
Vilayanur Ramachandran tells us what brain damage can reveal about the connection between celebral tissue and the mind, using three startling delusions as examples.
Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran outlines the fascinating functions of mirror neurons. Only recently discovered, these neurons allow us to learn complex social behaviors, some of which formed the foundations of human civilization as we know it.
Horizon uncovers the secret world of our dreams. In a series of cutting-edge experiments and personal stories, we go in search of the science behind this most enduring mystery and ask: where do dreams come from? Do they have meaning? And ultimately, why do we dream?
What the film reveals is that much of what we thought we knew no longer stands true. Dreams are not simply wild imaginings but play a significant part in all our lives as they have an impact on our memories, the ability to learn, and our mental health. Most surprisingly, we find nightmares, too, are beneficial and may even explain the survival of our species.
Some writers have proposed that intelligent extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth in antiquity or prehistory and made contact with humans. Such visitors are called ancient astronauts or ancient aliens. Proponents suggest that this contact influenced the development of human cultures, technologies and religions. A common variant of the idea is that deities from most, if not all, religions are actually extraterrestrials, and their technologies were taken as evidence of their divine status.
Proponents of ancient astronaut theories often maintain that humans are either descendants or creations of extraterrestrial beings who landed on Earth thousands of years ago. An associated idea is that much of human knowledge, religion, and culture came from extraterrestrial visitors in ancient times, in that ancient astronauts acted as a "mother culture". Ancient astronaut proponents also believe that travelers from outer space known as "astronauts" or "spacemen" built many of the structures on earth such as the pyramids in Egypt and the Moai stone heads of Easter Island or aided humans in building them.
Proponents argue that the evidence for ancient astronauts comes from supposed gaps in historical and archaeological records, and they also maintain that absent or incomplete explanations of historical or archaeological data point to the existence of ancient astronauts. The evidence is said to include archaeological artifacts that they argue are anachronistic or beyond the presumed technical capabilities of the historical cultures with which they are associated (sometimes referred to as "Out-of-place artifacts"); and artwork and legends which are interpreted as depicting extraterrestrial contact or technologies.
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union. It was one of the largest empires in world history, surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongolian empires: at one point in 1866, it stretched from eastern Europe across Asia and into North America.
At the beginning of the 19th century the Russian Empire extended from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea on the south, from the Baltic Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean on the east. With 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third largest population of the world at the time, after Qing China and the British Empire. Like all empires it represented a large disparity in economic, ethnic, and religious positions. Its government, ruled by the Emperor, was the last absolute monarchy in Europe at the time of its demise. Prior to the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 Russia was one of the five major Great Powers of Europe.
Under the Chin dynasty a strong central government was established; provinces replaced feudal states. The empire was extended into parts of south China. The Great Wall was largely completed, protecting China on the north from the Huns.
The Han dynasty rose to power in 202 B.C., and greatly expanded the empire. Conquests were made in south China, Annam (northern Vietnam), and Korea. The Huns north of the Great Wall were subdued. Han conquests, westward as far as present Afghanistan, brought about trade with the Middle East by way of the Silk Road through Central Asia. China exported vast quantities of silk westward, much of it reaching the Roman Empire.
The Han adopted, for those going into government service, a system of examinations based on the Confucian classics. Scholars edited the classics and discovered and copied many old texts. The first Chinese encyclopedia was compiled. Paper was invented. Buddhism was introduced from India.
The Han dynasty was deposed in 220 A.D. There followed nearly 400 years of divided rule and civil war. During 221-65 China was divided into three separate states Wu, Shu, and Wei traditionally called the Three Kingdoms. The country was reunited in 280 under the Western Chin dynasty, but the state collapsed in 316 following uprisings by various non-Chinese peoples, mainly Turkic, Mongol, and Tibetan. In the south small Chinese states continued to rule. China lost its outlying areas, closing the Silk Road. Political disunity was offset by a general cultural advancement, however. Trade was established with southeast Asia. Buddhism became more prevalent, while interest in Confucianism declined.
Unification of China was achieved by the Sui dynasty (589-618). Under the Sui an extensive system of canals was built, interconnecting the Huang He and the Yangtze River. Chinese control was reestablished over Annam and what is present Chinese Turkestan. Also, the Chinese way of life and system of government began to influence Japan profoundly. Contact was made by way of Korea, where Chinese culture had been dominant since earliest times.
Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history.
Through Ferguson's expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. Suddenly, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world's first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer.
With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What's the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do?
This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can't provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.
Perhaps most important, The Ascent of Money documents how a new financial revolution is propelling the world's biggest countries, India and China, from poverty to wealth in the space of a single generation—an economic transformation unprecedented in human history.
Yet the central lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts—sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers, sooner or later greed flips into fear. And that's why, whether you're scraping by or rolling in it, there's never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.
Body language is a form of non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. Humans send and interpret such signals almost entirely subconsciously.
John Borg attests that human communication consists of 93 percent body language and paralinguistic cues, while only 7% of communication consists of words themselves; however, Albert Mehrabian, the researcher whose 1960s work is the source of these statistics, has stated that this is a misunderstanding of the findings (see Misinterpretation of Mehrabian's rule). Others assert that "Research has suggested that between 60 and 70 percent of all meaning is derived from nonverbal behavior."
Body language may provide clues as to the attitude or state of mind of a person. For example, it may indicate aggression, attentiveness, boredom, relaxed state, pleasure, amusement, and intoxication, among many other cues.
Kirlian photography refers to a form of photogram made with electricity. It is named after Semyon Kirlian, who in 1939 accidentally discovered that if an object on a photographic plate is connected to a source of voltage an image is produced on the photographic plate.
Kirlian's work, from 1939 onward, involved an independent rediscovery of a phenomenon and technique variously called "electrography", "electrophotography" and "corona discharge photography." The Kirlian technique is contact photography, in which the subject is in direct contact with a film placed upon a charged metal plate.
Current research continues by Dr. Konstantin Korotkov in the Russian University, St. Petersburg State Technical University of Informational Technologies, Mechanics and Optics. Dr. Korotkov has published several books. He uses GDV (Gas Discharge Visualization) based on the Kirlian Effect. GDV instruments use glass electrodes to create a pulsed electrical field excitation (called "perturbation technique") to measure electro-photonic glow.
This is a playlist (5 videos, 40 minutes) about the GDV technique:
Lucifer, Beelzebub, The Beast, Satan... He has been called many names and taken many strange different forms over the ages. So where does the concept of the traditional evil come from? The History of the Devil goes back to the ancient Middle East, even before the Old Testament to find the roots of Satan. The answer is in the ancient Mesopotamia. In Zoroastrianism it was believed that the all-knowing good God was Ahura Mazda, the one Uncreated Creator, and Ahriman was his antithesis, the God of chaos, the dark and evil one. Probably the bases of these teachings like heaven and hell, good and evil were transferred to the other monotheistic religions.
The idea of "God's evil enemy" has been around for thousands of years. While early Christian clerics used the Devil as a symbol of heresy, the concept did not begin with the Christian Bible, but rather in ancient Persia some 3500 year ago. Since then, he has acquired horns, a forked tail and innumerable names in all aspects of world culture as well as a central role in the way we think.
THE HISTORY OF THE DEVIL looks at how our concept of evil, as symbolized by the Devil, has evolved over the centuries to fit the needs of government, churches, demagogues and opportunists everywhere.
The idea of a single devine being - God, Yahweh, Allah - has existed for over 4,000 years. But the history of God is also the history of human struggle. While Judaism, Islam and Christianity proclaim the goodness of God, organised religion has too often been the catalyst for violence and ineradicable prejudice.
In this fascinating, extensive and original account of the evolution of belief, Karen Armstrong examines Western socitety's unerring fidelity to this idea of One God and the many conflicting convictions it engenders. A controversial, extraordinary story of worship and war, A History of God confronts the most fundamental fact - or fiction - of our lives.
Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC. According to Plato, Atlantis was a naval power lying "in front of the Pillars of Hercules" that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune".
They defended the Holy Land for 200 years before a fall from grace. Now watch as the archaeologist unearth their city of Tortosa, now in the suburbs of modern day Tartus in Syria.
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge of Scotland and Grand Lodge of Ireland, over a quarter of a million under the jurisdiction of the United Grand Lodge of England and just under two million in the United States.
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge of Scotland and Grand Lodge of Ireland, over a quarter of a million under the jurisdiction of the United Grand Lodge of England and just under two million in the United States.
This explores the popular theories & little-known history behind the World's oldest secret society the Freemasons.
438 BC. The Parthenon is complete. This masterpiece is the crowning achievement of a remarkable century for the Greek people. They have enjoyed a burst of creativity rarely seen in the history of mankind. Led by Athens, the world's first democracy, the Greeks charged to new and dazzling heights of accomplishment. Art and form combined with engineering to create some of the most incredible structures ever seen.
The brilliance of their ideas had conquered the world's imagination, but Greece's territorial ambitions were stymied by one civil war after another.
It would take one man's desire for conquest and domination to unify Greece and then vanquish the world. Without Alexander the Great, it is possible Greece's Golden Era would have been just a footnote in history, but Alexander's triumph had its price. The Athenian experiment with democracy had ended and tens of thousands would die during Alexander's relentless attacks on Persia and Egypt. Still, his armies carried Greek life, culture and values far abroad and this empire became known as the "Hellenistic" world. Greece's amazing engineering achievements and ideas are still with us today.
From Pergamon, a city that still stands today as testament to the genius of Greek city planning and engineering, to theaters with acoustics that still amaze sound engineers today, to the world's first lighthouse and one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, this episode will examine the architecture and infrastructure engineered by the Greek Empire.
As much of the world descended into the dark ages after the fall of Rome, one civilization shone brilliantly: the Byzantine Empire. With ruthless might and supreme ingenuity the Byzantines ruled over vast swaths of Europe and Asia for more than a thousand years. The Byzantines constructed the ancient world's longest aqueduct, virtually invincible city walls, a massive stadium, and a colossal domed cathedral that defied the laws of nature.
After the fall of Rome, Italy fell into a dark sleep, and wasn't reawakened until the 11th century. Autonomous city-states emerged and these tiny republics began to revitalize their cities and build on a massive level not witnessed since the rise of Rome. In the late 15th and 16th centuries, alliances among various city-states continually shifted as foreign superpowers tried to sink their claws into Italy. The masters who are best known for creating the works of art and architecture of the Renaissance, were also the greatest military and civil engineers of the time.
The Persian Empire was one of the most mysterious civilizations in the ancient world. Persia became an empire under the Cyrus the Great, who created a policy of religious and cultural tolerance that became the hallmark of Persian rule. Engineering feats include an innovative system of water management; a cross-continent paved roadway stretching 1500 miles; a canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea; and the creation of one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Mausoleum of Maussollos.
The rivalry between Persia and Athens led to a 30-year war known as the Persian Wars, the outcome of which helped create the world we live in today. Peter Weller hosts.
Spartacus (c. 109 BC - 71 BC), according to Roman historians, was a slave and a gladiator who became a leader (or possibly one of several leaders) in the somewhat successful slave uprising against the Roman Republic known as the Third Servile War. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are inaccurate and often contradictory.
In 480 B.C, during the Greco-Persian Wars the Persian Empire led by Xerxes I of Persia fought the Greek city-states forces at the pass of Thermopylae in central Greece. This battle become known as the Battle of Thermopylae.
The only thing stopping the Persians, was an army led by King Leonidas I & his 300 Spartans, the greatest soldiers the world has ever known. Vastly outnumbered, the Greek Spartans held up the Persians advance for three days, until they were overrun by Persian forces. The film also focus on the lead up to the Battle of Thermopylae revealing that the Greeks might have played a part in the Ionian Revolts in Asia Minor in 499 to 493 B.C.
Its brings its viewers into understanding ancient warfare when the documentary focus on the naval battle around Thermopylae, strategic & tactical considerations, and the aftermath of the battle which lead to the burning of Athens and Greek victories in battles such as Plataea. It also reveals to those unaware that the Spartans didn't fight alone.
Three cities dominated the ancient world: Athens, Rome and a third, now almost forgotten. It lies hidden beneath the waters of the Mediterranean and a sprawling modern metropolis.
Alexandria was a city built on a dream; a place with a very modern mindset, where - as with the worldwide web - one man had a vision that all knowledge on earth could be stored in one place.
Bettany Hughes goes in search of this lost civilisation, revealing the story of a city founded out of the desert by Alexander the Great in 331 BC to become the world's first global centre of culture, into which wealth and knowledge poured from across the world.
Until its decline in the fourth and fifth Centuries AD, Alexandria became a crucible of learning; Hughes uncovers the incredible discoveries and the technical achievements of this culture.
The film's cast of characters reads like a list of the greatest figures of ancient times: political figures like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, and intellectuals including female mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Hypatia, Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes and Ptolemy.
At last, after 1,500 years squashed under a modern metropolis, new clues are emerging from the earth to the real nature of this grand experiment in human civilization.
Once exclusively reserved for study by ultra-religious male scholars of Judaism, Kabbalah has recently become known as a multi-million dollar, celebrity-endorsed phenomenon.
SECRETS OF KABBALAH strips away the hype and demystifies the writings that have been studied by Jewish scholars for thousands of years. Is the Kabbalah of the stars the same Kabbalah that Jewish scholars have studied for generations? Even as more and more people are seen wearing the red string bracelets associated with Kabbalah, the original teachings behind this seemingly new fad are in fact understood by precious few.
Physicist Jim Al-Khalili travels through Syria, Iran, Tunisia and Spain to tell the story of the great leap in scientific knowledge that took place in the Islamic world between the 8th and 14th centuries.
Its legacy is tangible, with terms like algebra, algorithm and alkali all being Arabic in origin and at the very heart of modern science – there would be no modern mathematics or physics without algebra, no computers without algorithms and no chemistry without alkalis.
For Baghdad-born Al-Khalili this is also a personal journey and on his travels he uncovers a diverse and outward-looking culture, fascinated by learning and obsessed with science.
From the great mathematician Al-Khwarizmi, who did much to establish the mathematical tradition we now know as algebra, to Ibn Sina, a pioneer of early medicine whose Canon of Medicine was still in use as recently as the 19th century, he pieces together a remarkable story of the often-overlooked achievements of the early medieval Islamic scientists.
From a small Italian community in 15th-century Florence, the Medici family would rise to rule Europe in many ways. Using charm, patronage, skill, duplicity and ruthlessness, they would amass unparalleled wealth and unprecedented power.
They would also ignite the most important cultural and artistic revolution in Western history–the European Renaissance. But the forces of change the Medici helped unleash would one day topple their ordered world. An epic drama played out in the courts, cathedrals and palaces of Europe, this series is both the tale of one family’s powerful ambition and of Europe’s tortured struggle to emerge from the ravages of the dark ages.
A tale of one family’s powerful ambition and of Europe’s struggle to emerge from the ravages of the Dark Ages. Beginning in the 14th century, The Medici used charm, skill and ruthlessness to garner unparalleled wealth and power. Standing at the helm of the Renaissance, they ruled Europe for more than 300 years and inspired the great artists, scientists and thinkers who gave birth to the modern world.
Episode 1: Birth of a Dynasty
Wealthy Florentine banker Cosimo de' Medici's search of Europe for relics of antiquity sparks classical learning and inventive thinking.
Episode 2: Magnificent Medici
Lorenzo de' Medici becomes a driving force of the Renaissance; monk Savonarola promotes fundamentalist purification of Florence after the death of Lorenzo de' Medici.
Episode 3: Medici Popes
Giovanni de' Medici becomes Pope Leo X in 1513 and begins to sell indulgences to restore papal funds; Martin Luther protests the selling of indulgences.
Episode 4: Power vs Truth
Giorgio Vasari writes a book to define the Renaissance; Galileo pursues his scientific studies with the support of the Medici family.
What is Islam? Who is Muhammad? This is the first of 3 part documentary narrated by Ben Kingsley about Islam and attempts to answer these questions. This part deals with the life of the Prophet Muhammad, his early life, his encounter with God Almighty and the birth of the Islam.
Islam would become the revitalizing force of a barbaric Arabia, returning people to God and bringing back the monotheistic message of Christianity and Judaism in its most powerful way. Islam Women were given rights over there husbands, racism was annihilated and the rich were made equal to the poor.
Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou examines how archaeological discoveries are changing the way people interpret stories from the Bible. Stavrakopoulou visits key archaeological excavations where ground-breaking finds are being unearthed, and examines evidence for and against the Biblical account of King David.
Was the God of Abraham unique? Were the ancient Israelites polytheists? And is it all possible that God had another half? Marshalling compelling evidence from archaeology, Islam and the Bible text itself, she identifies and visits the exact site of Eden.
3 videos / 3 hours
Episode 1: Did King David Empire Exist
Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou goes on the trail of King David and his empire.
Episode 2: Did God Have A Wife?
Francesca takes a look at the belief that the founding fathers of the three great religions of the West were all monotheists.
Five thousand years ago - nearly two millennia before the Romans built their first mud huts - ancient Egypt's mighty pharaohs began commissioning and building monumental masterpieces whose scale, beauty, and sophistication still boggle the mind.
Hosted by actor and art historian Peter Weller, the feature-length EGYPT: ENGINEERING AN EMPIRE explores Egypt's awe-inspiring engineering accomplishments through the prism of its pharaohs' indomitable personalities. As Egypt's pharaohs alternately conquered and ceded vast expanses of land, they pushed their royal architects to stretch the boundaries of imagination and human potential, in effect inventing the science of structural engineering. Follow the empire's development from the First Dynasty of 3000 BC through the last days of the reign of Ramses the Great in 1212 BC, from dazzling obelisks to the 700-foot Great Pyramid of Giza.
The human body is engineered for strength, power and endurance. Bone is sturdy as concrete but flexible enough to resist breaking and light enough to allow us to be quicker off the mark than a racehorse. Our muscles, ligaments and joints have far greater strength and endurance than we know. In this episode, we feature extraordinary tales of human strength told with stunning see-through "anatomy in motion."
• A young man is sucked up into a tornado, only to be spat out a quarter of a mile away, unharmed.
• Pinned by a massive boulder, a climber finds the strength to lift it off in a seemingly impossible muscular feat.
• A college football player sustains what would normally be unbearable injury and pain, yet has the mental stamina to continue playing at full output.
Plus, how does a swimmer tap the remnants of our distant ancestors' extraordinary stamina to swim across the English Channel in 14 hours? How do marathon runners keep the pace on their grueling 26-mile run?
Episode 2: Sight
Sight is the king of the senses. More than 80 percent of what we know of the world comes through our eyes -- without our sight we're lost. In this episode, we reveal the inner workings of our visual system as they've never been seen before, vividly confirming that ancient human adaptations prove no less crucial in modern life. The astounding hidden powers in our eyes are brought to life by true stories including:
• A patrolman relies on the power of sight as he risks his life in a high-speed chase of a murder suspect.
• A firefighter crawls through thick smoke in a burning building to seek survivors using innate night vision and clues decoded by his brain's vision center.
• A lifeguard applies his remarkable skills of pattern recognition to spot one drowning man amid thousands at the beach.
Plus, how do magicians fool us with their illusions? What lies behind the mysteries of our dreams? And what new powers will be discovered by the latest scientific breakthroughs enabling doctors to plug a camera directly into the brain?
Episode 3: Sensation
Less than one-twentieth of an inch below the surface of the skin are the "antennae" that allow us to sense the world around us. This vital layer is the gateway to the original information superhighway -- the nervous system. Millions of nerves carry sensations across the body and up to the brain at hundreds of miles an hour. But our nervous system also has abilities almost beyond imagining. Here is the story of the human body's crucial communications network as never seen before:
• When a father and daughter are stranded without water in the scorched Australian outback, a countdown to their death begins until their nerves trigger hidden survival systems.
• Rapid response wiring in his body allows a Coast Guard helicopter pilot to control his machine with amazing precision, even in storm-strength winds.
• A life of intense training and mental discipline allows Shaolin monks to endure powerful blows to their bodies without even blinking.
Plus, how can we move our fingers faster than we can think? How can you master the polygraph? What exactly is pain, and how do some control it?
Episode 4: Brain power
The driving force behind every one of us is the most powerful organ in the natural world: the human brain. Our central processing unit generates as many electrical impulses in a single day as all the telephones in the world combined. With new state-of-the-art imagery of this complex, mysterious machine, we reveal how our brain accelerates when faced with intense stress or danger, and taps into its deepest layers to unlock prehistoric survival instincts.
• NASCAR driver Clint Bowyer tells us about making split-second decisions in the heat and stress of a 400-lap race.
• Desperate firefighters, trapped by the intense heat of a forest fire, find out how the brain can take charge without waiting for conscious control.
• A lone explorer, piloting a balloon over the Arctic, pushes himself to the limits of sleep deprivation. It nearly costs him his life.
Plus, learn about the extraordinary ways our brains can re-tune our system when starvation threatens, and how sleep and dreams can unleash unseen powers in our mind.
With the help of a hammer-wielding scientist, Jennifer Aniston and a general anaesthetic, Professor Marcus du Sautoy goes in search of answers to one of science’s greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are?
While the thoughts that make us feel as though we know ourselves are easy to experience, they are notoriously difficult to explain. So, in order to find out where they come from, Marcus subjects himself to a series of probing experiments.
He learns at what age our self-awareness emerges and whether other species share this trait. Next, he has his mind scrambled by a cutting-edge experiment in anesthesia.
Having survived that ordeal, Marcus is given an out-of-body experience in a bid to locate his true self. And in Hollywood, he learns how celebrities are helping scientists understand the microscopic activities of our brain.
Finally, he takes part in a mind-reading experiment that both helps explain and radically alters his understanding of who he is.
Why do we think and feel as we do? For years man has sought to understand the workings of the mind. Now, with advances in modern-day technology and developments in neuroscience, a whole new world of brain research is opening up.
Understanding our minds is becoming a reality. Guided by top neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, Brain Story attempts to answer the question “What is my mind and who am I?” We talk to philosophers, clinicians, neurosurgeons and their patients to discover quite what a finely balanced and complex machine the brain is.
All in the Mind. Susan Greenfield explains why she believes all aspects of human experience will eventually be explained in terms of the physical processes of the brain. The story of how we have gradually come to understand the astonishing complexity of the brain is revealed, from the earliest crude studies of the effects of brain injury, through to the latest insights from direct stimulation of specific areas in patients undergoing brain surgery whilst wide awake. Is it possible that our most spiritual feelings are merely the result of electrical activity in the temporal lobe?
In the Heat of the Moment. Where do emotions come from? Why do they feel so different from thoughts? Susan Greenfield looks at some of the old attempts to explain emotion in terms of brain areas and explains why she believes the answer must lie in the biochemistry of the brain – all the hundreds of chemical neurotransmitters which bathe the nerves.
The Mind’s Eye. The illusion of vision. It feels as though we open our eyes and just see what’s out there, but the more we learn about the brain’s visual system, the further it seems this is from the truth. Patients who can’t see movement or recognize faces, reveal the tricks and short cuts the brain uses to construct an illusion of reality. Is the brain making up so much of what we think we’re seeing that vision is really just dreaming with your eyes open?
First Among Equals. What is it about brains that has put us in charge of the planet? Were have humans’ unique linguistic abilities come from? Are there special structures in our brains which no other animals possess? Or is it possible that our sophisticated rich cultures are merely the result of having larger brains? Susan Greenfield explains why she believes we are truly just big-brained chimps.
Growing the Mind. The changes in the brain during the growth and development of a baby into an adult are explored. Susan Greenfield looks at how little of the fine structure of our brains is predetermined at birth, how the connections between nerves are constantly changing in response to what we encounter in the outside world. She explains her view that learning, memory and even the process of becoming a unique individual, should all be seen as a restless brain adapting minute by minute to the environment it encounters. Life is about how the world leaves its mark on us.
The Final Mystery. How do our brains generate consciousness? We take it for granted that the brain makes being alive feel the way it does, but there’s no reason why it should.The brain is made of the same biological ingredients as the rest of the body, and yet somehow it manages to generate the indescribable phenomenon of consciousness. Consciousness is far more than just being able to imagine; it’s a whole extra dimension.
Eleven dimensions, parallel universes, and a world made out of strings? It's not science fiction, it's string theory. Bestselling author and physicist Brian Greene offers a tour of this seemingly strange world in "The Elegant Universe," a three-hour Peabody Award-winning miniseries.
3 videos / 3 hours
Episode 1: Einstein's Dream - The Elegant Universe - PBS NOVA
Episode 2: String's The Thing - The Elegant Universe - PBS NOVA
Episode 3: Welcome to the 11th Dimension - The Elegant Universe - PBS NOVA
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