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Artic

   2009    Nature
The Russian Arctic is one of the world’s most extreme habitats, yet it is a haven for polar bears, lemmings, arctic foxes and walruses. In late August, massive muskoxen bulls gather together to compete for mating dominance. Each bull can weigh 400 kilogram’s and charge at a speed of 40 kilometres an hour; a head-to-head impact can be heard more than a kilometre away
Series: Wild Russia

The Shock Doctrine

   2009    Economy
The Shock Doctrine is a devastating critique of the free market policies which have come to dominate the world. Using shock therapy as a metaphor, the film investigates Klein's central idea of disaster capitalism. Naomi Klein's explores how both natural and man-made disasters are used to force disadvantageous political and economic changes on unwilling governments is brought to the screen in this documentary. The Shock Doctrine explores how the United States, with the help of the C.I.A., became enamored of Milton Friedman's interpretation of free-market capitalism and attempted to persuade developing nations of its value.

Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life

   2009    Science
David Attenborough asks three key questions: how and why did Darwin come up with his theory of evolution? Why do we think he was right? And why is it more important now than ever before? David starts his journey in Darwin's home at Down House in Kent, where Darwin worried and puzzled over the origins of life. David goes back to his roots in Leicestershire, where he hunted for fossils as a child, and where another schoolboy unearthed a significant find in the 1950s. And he revisits Cambridge University, where both he and Darwin studied, and where many years later the DNA double helix was discovered, providing the foundations for genetics. At the end of his journey in the Natural History Museum in London, David concludes that Darwin's great insight revolutionised the way in which we see the world. We now understand why there are so many different species, and why they are distributed in the way they are. But above all, Darwin has shown us that we are not set apart from the natural world, and do not have dominion over it. We are subject to its laws and processes, as are all other animals on earth to which, indeed, we are related.

What Darwin Didnt Know

   2009    Science
Documentary which tells the story of the theory of evolution by natural selection which is now scientific orthodoxy, but when it was unveiled it caused a storm of controversy. Many people criticised it for being short on evidence and long on assertion and Darwin, being the honest scientist that he was, agreed with them. He entrusted future generations to complete his work and prove the essential truth of his vision. Evolutionary biologist Professor Armand Marie Leroi argues that, with the new science of evolutionary developmental biology (evo devo), it may be possible to take that theory to a new level - to do more than explain what has evolved in the past, and start to predict what might evolve in the future.

Cannabis: The Evil Weed

   2009    Medicine
Cannabis is the world's favourite drug, but also one of the least understood. Can cannabis cause schizophrenia? Is it addictive? Can it lead you on to harder drugs? Or is it simply a herb, an undervalued medicine? Addiction specialist Dr John Marsden discovers that modern science is finally beginning to find answers to these questions. John traces the cannabis plants' birthplace in Kazakhstan; finds the origins of our sensitivity to cannabis in the simple sea squirt; and finds out just what it does to our brains. He meets people who have been changed by this drug in drastically different ways - from those whose lives have been shattered to those who lives have been revived.

South Pacific Fragile Paradise

   2009    Nature
The extraordinary wildlife, culture and history of this immense, fascinating ocean and its myriad islands are revealed in stunning detail. With its coral reefs, turquoise lagoons and dramatic oceanic atolls, the South Pacific is the archetypal paradise. It is still relatively healthy and teeming with fish, but it is a fragile paradise. International fishing fleets are taking a serious toll on the sharks, albatross and tuna, and there are other insidious threats to these bountiful seas. We look at what is being done to preserve the ocean and its wildlife.