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Putin Forever

   2020    History
Putin returns to power under a storm after a four-year absence, but his attempts to improve his popularity are hobbled by accusations of corruption. The final part of this sinister history doesn’t quite come up to date with Vladimir Putin’s recent moves to 'reset' the Russian constitution so he can rule, theoretically, until at least 2036 – longer than Stalin. But it does walk us through some of his other moves to entrench power, including vote-rigging in parliamentary elections that was so brazen, his approval ratings fell amid mass street protests. Leading the protests was opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was then simply gunned down on a street near the Kremlin.
These days, we are told, the world stage interests Putin more than the Russian one, and with various 'mini-Putins' installed around the world, his legacy looks safe.
Series: Putin: A Russian Spy Story

Words on a Page

   2020    History
Writing itself is 5,000 years old, and for most of that time words were written by hand using a variety of tools. The Romans were able to run an empire thanks to documents written on papyrus. Scroll books could be made quite cheaply and, as a result, ancient Rome had a thriving written culture. With the fall of the Roman Empire, papyrus became more difficult to obtain. Europeans were forced to turn to a much more expensive surface on which to write: Parchment. Medieval handwritten books could cost as much as a house, they also represent a limitation on literacy and scholarship.
No such limitations were felt in China, where paper had been invented in the second century. Paper was the foundation of Chinese culture and power, and for centuries how to make it was kept secret. When the secret was out, paper mills soon sprang up across central Asia. The result was an intellectual flourishing known as the Islamic Golden Age. Muslim scholars made discoveries in biology, geology, astronomy and mathematics. By contrast, Europe was an intellectual backwater.
That changed with Gutenberg’s development of movable type printing. The letters of the Latin alphabet have very simple block-like shapes, which made it relatively simple to turn them into type pieces. When printers tried to use movable type to print Arabic texts, they found themselves hampered by the cursive nature of Arabic writing. The success of movable type printing in Europe led to a thousand-fold increase in the availability of information, which produced an explosion of ideas that led directly to the European Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution that followed.
Series: The Secret History of Writing

Maritime

   2021    Technology
The world's shipping industry is facing a major challenge. If global shipping were a country it would be the sixth largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions. At current growth rates, if we do nothing, those emissions could double or even triple by 2050. But shipping companies and engineers are creating remarkable new machines to make their industry greener, using a resource that has moved man across the world’s oceans for thousands of years…Wind.
Series: Engineering the Future Series 3

The Price of Loyalty

   2021    History
The pirates of the Caribbean's humble base in Nassau turns into a boomtown run by Benjamin Hornigold. But Hornigold's crew deposes him for his refusal to attack English ships; but one man, Edward Thatch, remains loyal. Meanwhile, pirate raids on British slaves provokes outrage.
Series: The Lost Pirate Kingdom

Wild Wild Country Part Three

   2018    Culture
Ma Anand Sheela emerges as a provocative spokeswoman. The Rajneesh control Antelope city council and they establish a police force in the city. Bhagwan tells Sheela it is time to control Wasco County. As Election Day approaches, the Rajneeshees recruit thousands of homeless people to fortify their ranks.
Series: Wild Wild Country

Speed of Life

   2021    Nature
Will Smith discovers hidden worlds of fast and slow in the Earth's oldest desert. Worlds where things go so fast or so slow we don't even know they're happening. This hidden world of speed is everywhere, even 80 feet underwater. Hundreds of tiny anemones, anchored to the rocks, but film them patiently, then speed it up, and this miniature world comes to life. A lizard's tongue is one of the fastest movements in the entire animal kingdom. An orca creates a shock wave by slapping her tail and that pulse can travel through the water at more than a thousand miles an hour. to stuns the herrings she hunts.
Series: Welcome to Earth
The Sky at Night

The Sky at Night

2023  Science
Dangerous knowledge

Dangerous knowledge

2007  Science
Leaving Neverland

Leaving Neverland

2019  Culture
The Hunt

The Hunt

2015  Nature
The Hunt

The Hunt

2015  Nature
The Jinx

The Jinx

  History
The Crime of the Century

The Crime of the Century

2021  Medicine