Iconoclastic Individualism - Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (12 July 1817 -- 6 May 1862) born David Henry Thoreau was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, philosopher, and abolitionist who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

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Bringing Up Baby

Natural World investigates the vital bond between animal mothers and their babies.

The more we study animals, the more we realize just how emotional they are; all mothers are faced with tough choices as they struggle to bring up babies in a difficult and dangerous world, constantly balancing their own needs with those of their infants.

Yet there are many ways to raise your brood, from the fish who looks after her young in her mouth to the extended childhoods of gorillas or orang-utans.

Male lions may protect or kill cubs, for example. Orang-utans spend more time growing up than almost any other animal, as each ape may spend a decade learning from its mother.

Baby broad-snouted caiman spend much less time in the company of their mother. But even these reptiles help their young hatch from their eggs.

The very act of giving birth is traumatic, and baby guanacos must be alert for predators from almost the moment they are born.

Even males sometimes get in on the act. Male California mouse support the females as they give birth, acting the doting father, helping to keep his mate and the nest clean.

Female Amourobius spiders make the ultimate sacrifice, giving up their bodies to feed their offspring. The spiderlings feast directly upon the flesh of their mother.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 40 minutes)

Cloning the First Human

Doctors Panayiotis Zavos and Severino Antinori claim they are ready to embark on the greatest human experiment of our age. They say they will attempt to clone a human being. Most people think the objections to this are ethical – human cloning would create many moral dilemmas.

There is another question that few ever ask: is the science actually ready yet for cloning healthy humans? Horizon follows the latest research, which has led many scientists to believe that Zavos and Antinori’s plans to clone the first human could end in tragedy. The program also meets couples who think cloning offers them the only way to raise a child who is truly their own.

For decades, cloning remained within the realms of science fiction. The idea that instead of combining a sperm and an egg, a new human could be made from a single cell taken from an adult, seemed completely absurd. But that all changed in February 1997 when Dolly the sheep became the first animal cloned from an adult.

Ever since Dolly, scientists have been continuing to experiment with cloning animals. So far, they have succeeded with a lot of side effects in cloning sheep, cattle, pigs, goats and mice, fueling the belief that humans could be next. 

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 48 minutes)

The Fall of Lehman Brothers

On September 15, 2008, the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following the massive exodus of most of its clients, drastic losses in its stock, and devaluation of its assets by credit rating agencies.

The filing marked the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.

The following day, the British bank Barclays announced its agreement to purchase, subject to regulatory approval, Lehman’s North American investment-banking and trading divisions along with its New York headquarters building.

On September 20, 2008, a revised version of that agreement was approved by Judge James Peck.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 59 minutes)

Countdown to Zero

Countdown to Zero is a documentary film released in 2010 which argues that the likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons has increased since the end of the Cold War due to terrorism, nuclear proliferation, theft of nuclear materials and weapons, and other factors.

The film features interviews with leading statesmen and experts, including Tony Blair, Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Robert McNamara, Pervez Musharraf, and Valerie Plame Wilson.

The idea for the film first occurred to the producers when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Al Gore after the success of his documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.

A History of Britain

Stretching from the Stone Age to the year 2000, Simon Schama’s Complete History of Britain does not pretend to be a definitive chronicle of the turbulent events which buffeted and shaped the British Isles.

What Schama does do, however, is tell the story in vivid and gripping narrative terms, free of the fustiness of traditional academe, personalizing key historical events by examining the major characters at the center of them.

Not all historians would approve of the history depicted here as shaped principally by the actions of great men and women rather than by more abstract developments, but Schama’s way of telling it is a good deal more enthralling as a result.

A study of the history of the British Isles, each of the 15 episodes allows Schama to examine a particular period and tell of its events in his own style.

1. Beginnings: 3100 BC – 1000 AD. Simon Schama starts his story in the stone age village of Skara Brae, Orkney. Over the next four thousand years Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Danes, and Christian missionaries arrive, fight, settle and leave their mark on what will become the nations of Britain.

2. Conquest: 1000–1087. 1066 is not the best remembered date in British history for nothing. In the space of nine hours whilst the Battle of Hastings raged, everything changed. Anglo-Saxon England became Norman and, for the next 300 years, its fate was decided by dynasties of Norman rulers.

3. Dynasty: 1087–1216. There is no saga more powerful than that of the warring dynasty – domineering father, beautiful, scheming mother and squabbling, murderous sons and daughters, (particularly the nieces). In the years that followed the Norman Conquest, this was the drama played out on the stage of British history.

4. Nations: 1216–1348, this is the epic account of how the nations of Britain emerged from under the hammer of England’s “Longshanks” King Edward I, with a sense of who and what they were, which endures to this day.

5. King death: 1348–1500. It took only six years for the plague to ravage the British Isles. Its impact was to last for generations. But from the ashes of this trauma an unexpected and unique class of Englishmen emerged.

6. Burning convictions: 1500–1558. Here Simon Schama charts the upheaval caused as a country renowned for its piety, whose king styled himself Defender of the Faith, turns into one of the most aggressive proponents of the new Protestant faith.

7. The body of the Queen: 1558–1603. This is the story of two queens: Elizabeth I of England, the consummate politician, and Mary I, Queen of Scots, the Catholic mother. It is also the story of the birth of a nation.

8. The British wars: 1603–1649. The turbulent civil wars of the early seventeenth century would culminate in two events unique to British history; the public execution of a king and the creation of a republic. Schama tells of the brutal war that tore the country in half and created a new Britain – divided by politics and religion and dominated by the first truly modern army, fighting for ideology, not individual leaders.

9. Revolutions: 1649–1689. Political and religious revolutions racked Britain after Charles I’s execution, when Britain was a joyless, kingless republic led by Oliver Cromwell. His rule became so unpopular that for many it was a relief when the monarchy was restored after his death, but Cromwell was also a man of vision who brought about significant reforms.

10. Britannia incorporated: 1690–1750. As the new century dawned, relations between Scotland and England had never been worse. Yet half a century later the two countries would be making a future together based on profit and interest. The new Britain was based on money, not God.

11. The wrong empire: 1750–1800. The series is the exhilarating and terrible story of how the British Empire came into being through its early settlements—the Caribbean through the sugar plantations (and helped by slavery), the land that later became the United States and India through the British East India Company – and how it eventually came to dominate the world. A story of exploration and daring, but also one of exploitation, conflict, and loss.

12. Forces of nature: 1780–1832. Britain never had the kind of revolution experienced by France in 1789, but it did come close. In the mid-1770s the country was intoxicated by a great surge of political energy. Re-discovering England’s wildernesses, the intellectuals of the “romantic generation” also discovered the plight of the common man, turning nature into a revolutionary force.

13. Victoria and her sisters: 1830–1910. As the Victorian era began, the massive advance of technology and industrialisation was rapidly reshaping both the landscape and the social structure of the whole country. To a much greater extent than ever before women would take a center-stage role in shaping society.

14. The empire of good intentions: 1830–1925. This episode charts the chequered life of the liberal empire from Ireland to India – the promise of civilisation and material betterment and the delivery of coercion and famine.

15. The two Winstons”: 1910–1965. In the final episode, Schama examines the overwhelming presence of the past in the British twentieth century and the struggle of leaders to find a way to make a different national future. As towering figures of the twentieth century, Churchill and Orwell (through his 1984 character Winston Smith) in their different ways exemplify lives spent brooding and acting on that imperial past, and most movingly for us, writing and shaping its history.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 13 hours)
There are only 50 videos embedded here. Go to YouTube to watch the rest of it.

The 9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction

This incisive documentary analyzes the extreme, yet persistent, theories that cloud the memory of our national tragedy. Experts in engineering, intelligence and the military scrutinize 9/11 conspiracy theories. Based in large part on a breakthrough exposé by Popular Mechanics. Produced by the authoritative NBC News Productions.

The tragedy of the attacks of 9/11 is ours to share; it is ours to remember; it is ours to understand. Yet, our memory and understanding were clouded almost from the first horrible moment Flight 11 struck the north tower. No-one could believe such a brazen and simple attack could be so tragically effective.

Disbelief quickly gave way to conspiracy theories and suspicions. These ideas from the fringe found a fertile breeding ground on the Internet and today many of them, through the power of almost infinite repetition, have nearly gained the status of truth.

The 9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction exhaustively examines some of the most persistent of these theories: that the World Trade Center was brought down by a controlled demolition; that a missile, not a commercial airliner, hit the Pentagon; and that members of the U.S. government orchestrated the attacks in hopes of creating a war in the Middle East.

Each conspiracy argument is countered by a variety of experts in the fields of engineering, intelligence and the military. The program also delves into the anatomy of such conspiracies and how they grow on the Internet. A must see if you regard Loose Change, Final Cut as a credible documentary.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 1 hour, 17 minutes)
I don’t know if this is the same documentary, but here it is at Google Videos.

America’s Bankrupt Banks (Inside the Meltdown)

On Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, the astonished leadership of the U.S. Congress was told in a private session by the chairman of the Federal Reserve that the American economy was in grave danger of a complete meltdown within a matter of days. There was literally a pause in that room where the oxygen left, says Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.)

As the housing bubble burst and trillions of dollars’ worth of toxic mortgages began to go bad in 2007, fear spread through the massive firms that form the heart of Wall Street. By the spring of 2008, burdened by billions of dollars of bad mortgages, the investment bank Bear Stearns was the subject of rumors that it would soon fail.

Rumors are such that they can just plain put you out of business, Bear Stearns’ former CEO Alan Ace Greenberg tells FRONTLINE.

The company’s stock had dropped from $171 to $57 a share, and it was hours from declaring bankruptcy. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acted. It was clear that this had to be contained. There was no doubt in his mind, says Bernanke’s colleague, economist Mark Gertler.

Bernanke, a former economics professor from Princeton, specialized in studying the Great Depression. He more than anybody else appreciated what would happen if it got out of control, Gertler explains.

To stabilize the markets, Bernanke engineered a shotgun marriage between Bear Sterns and the commercial bank JPMorgan, with a promise that the federal government would use $30 billion to cover Bear Stearns’ questionable assets tied to toxic mortgages. It was an unprecedented effort to stop the contagion of fear that seemed to be threatening the rest of Wall Street.

While publicly supportive of the deal, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former Wall Street executive with Goldman Sachs, was uncomfortable with government interference in the markets. That summer, he issued a warning to his former colleagues not to expect future government bailouts, saying he was concerned about a legal concept known as moral hazard.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 52 minutes)

Hawaii: Message in the Waves

Hawaii: Message in the Waves is a film from the BBC Natural History Unit looking at some of the environmental challenges facing the people and wildlife of the Hawaiian Islands.

Although the documentary is from a Hawaiian perspective it is really a global film. Because of their size, location and social history, the Hawaiian Islands represent a microcosm of the planet and are in a unique position to tell all of us where we are going wrong and what we can do to help put things right.

For more than just surfers, the ocean is an integral and inseparable part of Hawaiian life. To see the magnificent waves crash upon the Hawaii’s beaches, it’s clear why: From a Hawaiian perspective the ocean represents the ultimate beauty and bounty of life.

The waves that carry this bounty also carry a message. It is becoming increasingly clear that the oceans, not just around Hawaii but the world over, are in peril.

Now, scientists, surfers, environmentalists, and local Hawaiians, are mobilizing to address the issue. Hawaii: Message in the Waves follows their efforts as they try to clean the waters and save the marine life that calls them home.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 48 minutes)

Wild Russia

Wild Russia is a landmark High Definition series charting a journey across this vast land that stretches from Europe to the Pacific Ocean.

Covering 11 time zones, this huge country contains a wealth of unspoilt natural wildernesses – beyond the huge cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, a primal world with rough mountain summits, wild rivers and an unmatched flora and fauna reveals itself.

Through unprecedented access we showcase the wild spectacle that is the Russian continent. Across six dramatic episodes we explore this diverse and even exotic country.

Russia is a place of superlatives proving that size does matter. Few countries are home to such extraordinary mammals: the Amur Tiger is the world’s largest cat; the Polar Bear is the world’s largest land predator; massive brown bears scour the rivers in search of salmon.

The Russian skies are home to the world’s largest owl and majestic sea eagles. In the freezing northern waters, walruses and Beluga whales hunt for fish.

It also provides a refuge for some for some incredibly rare species – including the beautiful and elusive Amur Leopard.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 4 hours)

A History of Scotland

Landmark documentary series presented by Neil Oliver.

The Last of the Free – At the dawn of the first millennia, there was no Scotland or England.

Hammers of the Scots – Oliver charts the 13th century story of the two men who helped transform the Gaelic kingdom of Alba into the Scotland of today.

Bishop makes King – Robert Bruce’s 22-year struggle to secure the Scots’ independence is one of the most important chapters in Scotland’s story.

Language is Power – At one time, Gaelic Scotland – the people and the language – was central to the identity of Scots.

Project Britain – Oliver describes how the ambitions of two of Scotland’s Stuart monarchs were the driving force that united two ancient enemies, and set them on the road to the Great Britain we know today.

God’s Chosen People – Neil Oliver continues his journey through Scotland’s past with the story of the Covenanters, whose profound religious beliefs were declared in the National Covenant of 1638.

Let’s Pretend – Bitterly divided by politics and religion for centuries, this is the infamous story of how Scotland and England came together in 1707 to form Great Britain.

The Price of Progress – Through the winning and losing of an American empire and the impact of the Scottish Enlightenment, Neil Oliver reveals how in the second half of the 18th century Scotland was transformed from a poor northern backwater with a serious image problem into one of the richest nations on Earth.

This Land Is Our Land – At the start of the 19th century, everything familiar was swept away. People fled from the countryside into the industrial towns of Scotland’s central belt.

Project Scotland – As a partner in the British Empire, Scotland began the 20th century with an advanced economy and a world-beating heavy industry.

Despite being hailed by BBC Scotland as “one of its most ambitious projects ever”, the show has not been without controversy. There have been some claims, on the website of the BBC, that the programme made some errors.

Further, the 10-part series has come under fire over claims that it is too “anglocentric”. The failure to front it with a historian (Neil Oliver is an archaeologist) has also been attacked. A couple of Scottish academic advisers also resigned before some programmes were completed.

Watch the full documentary now

Series 1 (playlist – 4 hours)

Series 2 (playlist – 4 hours)

Ancients Behaving Badly

Ancients Behaving Badly is an eight part series for History Television that applies a modern analytical take to some of classical history’s most infamous rulers.

Evidence for the lives of these people comes from very limited and biased sources. Like all histories, they’re written by the victors, whether the dynasty that usurped the line of Nero and Caligula and therefore had a vested interest in making them look bad, or the history of the Mongols, a hagiography to Genghis Khan written by his successors designed to make him look great.

Because of their bias, how much of these stories can we trust? Were these men as depraved or as noble as the stories suggest?

This series will answer these questions. Using physical testing, archaeology and a modern knowledge of the sciences from toxicology to ballistics we will re-appraise their lives to separate fact from fiction.

Historical experts will take us to the sites of some of the most pivotal or infamous events of their lives and we will piece together what really happened. Highly stylized two and a half D graphics will be used to bring the crucial and violent moments of their lives to life.

And psychiatric profiling will help us to piece together what was going on inside their heads and then see how they measure up to other brutal rulers on our unique Ancients Behaving Badly Psycho-graph.

By looking at these tyrants with a modern eye, the series aims to show them as real people, who behaved and thought and acted in ways that we can recognize. We will test the stories told about them in the crucible of the modern world.

Episodes included: Caligula, Attila The Hun, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Nero, Hannibal, Genghis Khan and Cleopatra

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 5 hours)

David Mason- Trial and Error

The War You Don’t See

A powerful and timely investigation into the media’s role in war, tracing the history of embedded and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan and disaster in Iraq.

As weapons and propaganda become even more sophisticated, the nature of war is developing into an electronic battlefield in which journalists play a key role, and civilians are the victims. But who is the real enemy?

John Pilger says in the film: “We journalists… have to be brave enough to defy those who seek our collusion in selling their latest bloody adventure in someone else’s country… That means always challenging the official story, however patriotic that story may appear, however seductive and insidious it is.

For propaganda relies on us in the media to aim its deceptions not at a far away country but at you at home… In this age of endless imperial war, the lives of countless men, women and children depend on the truth or their blood is on us… Those whose job it is to keep the record straight ought to be the voice of people, not power.”

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 1 hour, 35 minutes)

Is Seeing Believing?

Horizon explores the strange and wonderful world of illusions – and reveals the tricks they play on our senses and why they fool us.

We show how easy it is to trick your sense of taste by changing the colors of food and drink, explain how what you see can change what you hear, and see just how unreliable our sense of color can be.

But all this trickery has a serious purpose. It’s helping scientists to create a new understanding of how our senses work – not as individual senses, but connected together.

It holds the intriguing possibility that one sense could be mapped into another. This is what happened to Daniel Kish, who lost his sight as a child.

He is now able to create a vision of the world by clicking his tongue which allows him toecholocate like a bat.

And in a series of MRI scans, scientists are now looking to find out if Daniel’s brain may have actually rewired itself enabling him to use sound to create a visual image of the world.

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 58 minutes)

The Big Silence

Abbot Christopher Jamison, a Benedictine monk, believes that he can teach five ordinary people the value of silent meditation, as practised by monks in monasteries, so they can make it part of their everyday lives.

He sets up a three-month experiment to test out whether the ancient Christian tradition of silence can become part of modern lives.

Christopher brings the five volunteers to his own monastery, Worth Abbey, before sending them to begin a daunting eight days in complete silence at a specialist retreat center.

Journey into the interior space that time in silence reveals. They encounter anger, frustration and rebellion, but finally find their way to both personal and spiritual revelation.

Will they make silent contemplation a part of their everyday lives? How much will their lives be changed by what they have discovered in their time in silence And will Abbot Christopher’s hope, that they will discover a new belief in God, be fulfilled?

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 2 hours, 56 minutes)

Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from

People often credit their ideas to individual "Eureka!" moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the "liquid networks" of London's coffee houses to Charles Darwin's long, slow hunch to today's high-velocity web. 



Listen to the his Latest Book (Where good ideas come from) talk.

The Empathy Equation

Tyler is the grassroots coordinator for Project: AK-47, an organization that rescues and rehabilitates child soldiers. He is a student in his last semester here at Belmont, a husband and a soon-to-be father. He's here today to talk to us about how to build a bridge between western society and the needs of the world.

History of Advertising

9 parts 

A feminine response to Iceland's financial crash

Halla Tomasdottir managed to take her company Audur Capital through the eye of the financial storm in Iceland by applying 5 traditionally "feminine" values to financial services. At TEDWomen, she talks about these values and the importance of balance.

Watch: