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.
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.
Laurent Ballesta has yet again challenged himself to a new world record: spend 28 days at a depth of 100 meters to reveal the luxuriant and unknown depths of the Mediterranean. Because people have been travelling there for thousands of years, this sea is believed to be without secrets. And yet, far below its surface, lie vast unexplored territories, luxurious gardens worthy of the finest tropical coral reefs. These natural wonders are inaccessible to the traditional diver, in a twilight zone, between 60 and 120 m, where there’s less than 1% of sunlight. If diving at such depths is always a challenge, staying there is a fantasy, a utopia that becomes reality in 'The Deep Med'.
In August of 2018, Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old student in Sweden, starts a school strike for the climate. Her question for adults: if you don't care about her future on earth, why should she care about her future in school? Within months, her strike evolves into a global movement. Greta, a quiet Northern-European girl on the autism spectrum is now a world famous activist. The team behind Greta has been following the young activist from her very first day of school striking. The documentary shows the international crusade of Greta on in her goal to get people to listen to scientists about the world's environmental problems.
As World War II drags on into another bitter winter the Allies become desperate to end the conflict. Winston Churchill turns to his formidable bomber force to break the deadlock. The population of an eastern German city is caught in a devastating firestorm and harnessed by the Nazis; the controversy turns the Allies on themselves.
In just one generation, our ability to search for planets beyond our solar system has transformed. With modern techniques and telescopes, planetary scientists have found thousands of exoplanets in our universe, and many of them have the perfect conditions for life. Are we about to find Earth’s twin?
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.