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Love a Bot

2017 Technology

Here's a growing trend in artificial intelligence. Dating video games and other applications let users carry on virtual relationships with computerized girlfriends ranging from career women to Japanese schoolgirls. There's even something for the ladies. How soon will there be artificial intelligence of such complexity that protecting its well ...-being and rights becomes a serious political and social concern? In what year will there be an app or computer program or a device that you not only love but that possibly, within the realm of believability might actually love you ...back? Show More

Series: Mind Field Season 1

LudoBites

2017 Culture

Chef Ludo Lefebvre began his US career cooking at Los Angeles restaurant Bastide, but after it closed for renovations he opted not to return and instead chose to do things his way. Borrowing a friend’s bakery space, which was closed in the evenings, Ludo created a unique dining experience in the form of small, reservations-only, “chef’s choic ...e” dinners. These dinners became known as LudoBites, a pop-up deemed by Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold as "a transforming moment” for the LA dining scene. Show More

Series: The Mind of a Chef

Meat-Eaters

1998 Nature

This episode examines those birds whose sustenance comes from flesh and their methods of hunting. In New Zealand, Sir Attenborough observes Keas, parrots that do not eat meat exclusively, raiding a shearwater's burrow for a chick. However, it is the dedicated birds of prey, such as owls, buzzards, eagles, falcons and vultures, to which much o ...f the programme is devoted. In order to spot and pursue their victims, senses of sight and hearing are very acute. Vultures are the exception, in that they eat what others have left, and once a carcass is found, so many birds descend on it that the carrion seems submerged beneath them. The Turkey Vulture is an anomaly within its group, as it also has a keen sense of smell. Eagles defend their territory vigorously, and a pair of sea eagles are shown engaging in an aerial battle. The Galápagos Hawk hunts Marine Iguanas, but can only do so when its quarry is vulnerable, during the breeding season. The African Harrier Hawk has adapted to extracting burrowing animals by virtue of an especially long, double-jointed pair of legs. By contrast, a shrike is not equipped with the requisite sharp beak and talons needed for butchery, and so dismembers its kill by impaling it on the thorns of acacias. The Lammergeier eats bones, and will drop them on to rocks from a great height in order to break them down to a digestible size. Also featured are the Eurasian Sparrowhawk, Goshawk and Peregrine Falcon. Show More

Series: The Life of Birds

Montezuma

2009 History

Montezuma Dan Snow journeys to the ancient heart of Mexico in search of the lost civilisation of the Aztecs and their last and greatest ruler, Montezuma II (1502-1520). Montezuma inherited an empire of five million people, stretching from present-day Mexico to Nicaragua, from his uncle. His rule was marked by incessant warfare. Enemy states w ...ere growing more powerful and conquered tribes were becoming more rebellious. Within months of taking the throne in 1502, he went changed a man of good reason into a pitiless autocrat who declared himself a god, believing that fear and ruthlessness were the only ways to stop the empire falling apart. Yet it was at the hands of Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors that Montezuma met his downfall. But what was his relationship with Cortes, and why did such a ruthless leader submit to his captors with such relative ease? As Dan Snow visits the ruins and picks through current excavations, he pieces together the evidence of a gripping story: a divine tragedy of errors, the clash of civilisations, the end of a world - and a very human God. Show More

Narco Cultura

2012 Culture

A documentary feature on the explosive narco culture, a phenomenon blurring the lines between war and entertainment. To a growing number of Mexicans and Latinos in the Americas, the Narco Traffickers represent the only models of fame and success, the only way out of the ghetto. This is the untold story behind the drug war, an unstoppable cycl ...e that has created a culture of addiction on both sides of the border — addiction to the vanity of money, drugs and violence. These are the personal stories of those entangled in this war, from the musicians who profit by glorifying violence, to the man who collects the bodies the morning after. Show More

Navy of the Damned

History

Recent archaeological sites in England offer a whole new perspective on the life and death of the seafarers and marines who built the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries. The bones of sailors reveal surprising and shocking facts. Apparently not only seasoned men but also half children did their service in the Royal Navy; according t ...o the investigations, the youngest were no older than 13 years. A forensic archaeologist studies the injuries on bones discovered at the site of an battle and suggests how these people may have died.
Three-hundred-and-fifty skeletons, exhumed from Royal Navy graveyards from the age of Nelson's Navy, are throwing an extraordinary new light on how these sailors lived, fought, outwitted their enemy, and, from the oldest to youngest, suffered for victory. These men were the beating heart of the most victorious fleet in history and never have so many of these sailors' remains been available for forensic investigation.
Six remarkable stories stand out: the child sailor, the top man, the American gunner, the freed slave, the marine and the victim of the sailor's most dreaded disease: syphilis. Broken bones, amputations, injuries from blows with a saber or cutlass, sexually transmitted diseases, but also malnutrition - the list of causes of death is long. There is definitely no tale of seafaring romance. These fighters and sailors sailed the globe as cannon fodder, conquered an empire for the crown, and were themselves forgotten. No longer just bones in a box, the men of Nelson's Navy are back from the dead. Show More

Series: Warrior Graveyard

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