Polley is both filmmaker and detective as she investigates the secrets kept by a family of storytellers. She playfully interviews and interrogates a cast of characters of varying reliability, eliciting refreshingly candid, yet mostly contradictory, answers to the same questions. As each relates their version of the family mythology, present-day recollections shift into nostalgia-tinged glimpses of their mother, who departed too soon, leaving a trail of unanswered questions. Polley unravels the paradoxes to reveal the essence of family: always complicated, warmly messy and fiercely loving. Stories We Tell explores the elusive nature of truth and memory, but at its core is a deeply personal film about how our narratives shape and define us as individuals and families.
Mind reading might sound like pseudoscientific, but its scientific counterpart, thought identification, is very much a real thing. It's based in neuroimaging and machine learning, and what's really cool is that experiments in mind reading aren't just about spying on what someone is thinking. They're about figuring out what thoughts are even made of. When you think of something, what does that mental picture actually look like? What resolution is it in? How high fidelity is a memory, and how do they change over time? In this episode, we are going to look at how
reading people's minds can help us answer these questions.
Black holes are the most enigmatic and exotic objects in the universe. They’re also the most powerful; with gravity so strong it can trap light. And they’re destructive, swallowing entire planets, even giant stars. Anything that falls into them vanishes... gone forever. Now, astrophysicists are realizing that black holes may be essential to how our universe evolved—their influence possibly leading to life on Earth and, ultimately, us. In this series, astrophysicist and author Janna Levin takes viewers on a journey to the frontiers of black hole science. Along the way, we meet leading astronomers and physicists on the verge of finding new answers to provocative questions about these shadowy monsters: Where do they come from? What’s inside? What happens if you fall into one? And what can they tell us about the nature of space, time, and gravity?
James Cameron journeys to some of the Earth's deepest, most extreme and unknown environments in search of the strange and alien creatures that live there. Joining him is a team of young NASA scientists and marine biologists who consider how these life forms represent life we may one day find in outer space not only on distant planets orbiting distant stars, but also within our own solar system. Aliens of the Deep is the result of expeditions to several hydrothermal vent sites in the Atlantic and the Pacific. These are violent volcanic regions where new planet is literally being born and where the interaction between ocean and molten rock creates plumes of super-heated, chemically-charged water that serve as oases for animals unlike anything ever discovered. Six-foot tall worms with blood-red plumes and no stomach, blind white crabs, and a biomass of shrimp capable of 'seeing' heat all compete to find just the right location in the flow of the super-heated, life-giving water or to fry.
The Spirit Molecule investigates dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a naturally occurring psychoactive compound, which exists in humans, and potentially every living organism. Utilizing Dr. Rick Strassman's government-sanctioned, human DMT research as the documentary's backbone, the study's potential impact and its inconceivable revelations emerge. A closer examination of DMT's effects through two traditionally opposed concepts, science and spirituality, The Spirit Molecule unravels the connections between cutting-edge neuroscience, quantum mechanics and human spirituality. The Spirit Molecule, a simple molecule with enormous implications. The subtle combination of science, spirituality, and philosophy results in an abundance of incredible ideas and theories that could alter the way we understand the nature of reality and our relationship to it.
At the height of his stardom Michael Jackson began long-running relationships with two boys, aged 7 and 10, and their families. Now in their 30s, they tell the story of how they were sexually abused by Jackson, and how they came to terms with it years later. Crucial and careful, the film gives empathetic breadth and depth to the complicated afterlife of child abuse as experienced by adult survivors.
Stories We Tell explores the elusive nature of truth and memory, but at its core is a deeply personal film about how our narratives shape and define us as individuals and families.