Culture

Dr Thomas Dixon delves into the BBC's archive to explore the troubled relationship between religion and science. From the creationists of America to the physicists of the Large Hadron Collider, he traces the expansion of scientific knowledge and asks whether there is still room for God in the modern world. He looks at what happens when new scientific discoveries start to explain events that were once seen as the workings of God, and explains how some of our most famous scientists have seen God in the grandest laws of the universe. Finally, he finds intriguing evidence from brain science which hints that belief in God is here to stay.

In August 2014, ISIS militants raided a Yazidi village in Syria, kidnapping thousands of men, women and children. Hundreds of the kidnapped men were killed or forced to convert to Islam; the women and children were sold as sex slaves or to marry ISIS fighters. Many were raped or became victims of other forms of sexual violence. Escaping ISIS depicts 34 of those captured by militants last year — mostly women and young children — reuniting with their families as they escape to freedom". Some victims were brought to freedom through underground networks, guides inside ISIS and resistance fighters. Women contacted the resistance fighters, begging for rescue; some said the alternative is committing suicide. Many escapees walk for several days with little food and water, often barefoot, risking getting recaptured and killed. One resistance fighter was shot in the back of the head in ISIS territory after they found out that he was working against them. The documentary shows parts of this treacherous journey to freedom.

We live our lives pursuing happiness 'out there' as if it is a commodity. We have become slaves to our own desires and craving. Happiness isn't something that can be pursued or purchased like a cheap suit. This is Maya, illusion, the endless play of form. In the Buddhist tradition, Samsara, or the endless cycle of suffering is perpetuated by the craving of pleasure and aversion to pain. Freud referred to this as the "pleasure principle." Everything we do is an attempt to create pleasure, to gain something that we want, or to push away something that is undesirable that we don't want. Even a simple organism like the paramecium does this. It is called response to stimulus. Unlike a paramecium, humans have more choice. We are free to think, and that is the heart of the problem. It is the thinking about what we want that has gotten out of control. The dilemma of modern society is that we seek to understand the world, not in terms of archaic inner consciousness, but by quantifying and qualifying what we perceive to be the external world by using scientific means and thought. Thinking has only led to more thinking and more questions. We seek to know the innermost forces which create the world and guide its course. But we conceive of this essence as outside of ourselves, not as a living thing, intrinsic to our own nature. It was the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung who said, "one who looks outside dreams, one who looks inside awakes." It is not wrong to desire to be awake, to be happy. What is wrong is to look for happiness outside when it can only be found inside.

A Personal Journey Into The Uncharted Depths Of Nerd Culture, A Realm Full Of Dangers, Creatures And More Or Less Precarious Working Conditions.
Artist and life-long nerd Johannes Grenzfurthner is taking us on a personal road trip from the West Coast to the East Coast of the USA, to introduce us to places and people that shaped and inspired his art and politics. Traceroute wants to chase and question the ghosts of nerddom's past, present and future. An exhilarating tour de farce into the guts of trauma, obsession and cognitive capitalism.

As Covid-19 puts Britain on lockdown, Jeremy Clarkson suddenly finds that his biggest worries aren’t all related to the upcoming lambing season. 'If you're involved in food production, you are key worker. We're gonna save the nation!... I've smoked a million cigarettes and I've had pneumonia. If I get it , there's not a lot of hope... Am I panic buying? I bought five tins of sardines the other day'.

In this second episode, a woman recounts her journey to becoming a mouthpiece for white nationalist hate speech, work that culminates in high-profile violence and murder. Samantha confesses how she became a spokesperson on the Internet for the hate speech of one of the many white nationalist groups that swarm the United States. And this fact ended in racist violence and death during an event.
'I had to start to realize what I was supporting. Was I the victim or was I also a villain?' says Samantha, looking into the camera. Hand in hand with xenophobia, digital true crime seems to have no respite, and so it will be shown how those supremacists work with good Wi-Fi.