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The TikTok Effect

   2023    Technology
What connects amateur sleuths turning up at crime scenes, anti-social behaviour in schools and riots? Marianna Spring has spent one year investigating harmful behaviour on TikTok spilling out into the real-world. As well as crunching the numbers, Marianna tracks down TikTok users, victims and former employees to interrogate and expose how extremely high engagement on TikTok around particular topics appears to be creating these 'frenzies'.
The documentary explores how users go to extreme lengths in order to get more engagement in a battle for followers and likes. Marianna investigates the role TikTok's algorithm and format plays in what’s happening and reveals insiders’ concerns about the app. The film seeks to find out if this is the real danger and what impact it is having on society.

The Empire of Reason

   2017    History
Al-Khalili travels to northern Syria to discover how, a thousand years ago, the great astronomer and mathematician Al-Biruni estimated the size of the earth to within a few hundred miles of the correct figure. He discovers how medieval Islamic scholars helped turn the magical and occult practice of alchemy into modern chemistry. In Cairo, he tells the story of the extraordinary physicist Ibn al-Haytham, who helped establish the modern science of optics and proved one of the most fundamental principles in physics - that light travels in straight lines. Prof Al-Khalili argues that these scholars are among the first people to insist that all scientific theories are backed up by careful experimental observation, bringing a rigour to science that didn't really exist before.
Series: Science and Islam

Fire

   2010    Culture
Iain explores man's relationship with fire. He begins by embarking on an extraordinary encounter with this terrifying force of nature - a walk right through the heart of a raging fire. Fire has long been our main source of energy and Iain shows how this meant that the planet played a crucial role in Britain's industrial revolution, whilst holding China's development back. Along the way he dives in a mysterious lake in Oregon, climbs a glacier of salt, crawls through an extraordinary cave in Iran and takes a therapeutic bath in crude oil.
Series: How Earth Made Us

Mystery of the Alien Asteroid

   2018    Science    HD
When a mysterious cigar-shaped object is spotted tumbling through our solar system, experts race to uncover it's true nature. The object, nicknamed Oumuamua, meaning 'a messenger that reaches out from the distant past' in Hawaiian, was discovered by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii. Since its discovery, scientists have been at odds to explain its unusual features and precise origins, with researchers first calling it a comet and then an asteroid before finally deeming it the first of its kind: a new class of 'interstellar objects.'
A recent paper by researchers at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics raises the possibility that the elongated dark-red object, which is 10 times as long as it is wide and travelling at speeds of 196,000 mph, might have an 'artificial origin.' The theory is based on the object's 'excess acceleration,' or its unexpected boost in speed as it travelled through and ultimately out of our solar system.
Series: Space Deepest Secrets

Love On The Spectrum Episode V

   2019    Culture
To help Andrew in his search for love, relationship specialist Jodi Rodgers has come to work with him - on his dating skills. Olivia hasn't given up in her search for love. Today, she's on her way to meet someone new. She's meeting Jackson. Jackson likes origami and the smell of perfume. He hates the sound of nails on a blackboard and people slurping their tea. Jimmy and Sharnae are arriving at the Gold Coast for their first-ever holiday together. And Jimmy has a surprise in store for tomorrow.
Series: Love On The Spectrum

The Island

   2020    History
Jeffrey Epstein brokers a plea deal that's unprecedented in its leniency, and a survivor opens up about the horrors she endured on his private island. Epstein Jeffrey shared his island with a lot of powerful and well-known figures, both politically and financially.
Series: Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich