Society
The average American family today carries 10 credit cards. Credit card debt and personal bankruptcies are now at an all time high. With no legal limit on the amount of interest or fees that can be charged, credit cards have become the most profitable sector of the American banking industry: more than $30 billion in profits last year alone. FRONTLINE examines how the credit card industry becam
A fascinating look at the relationship between genius and autism, with particular focus on the phenomenon of savants; a small group of enigmatic talents with extraordinary mental abilities.Savants number less than 100 worldwide. Some can work out five-digit multiplication in their heads, or recite thousands of books by heart. Others can play a piano melody after hearing it only once. Over half
Jiddu Krishnamurti was born on 11 May 1895 in Madanapalle, a small town in south India. He and his brother were adopted in their youth by Dr Annie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society. Dr Besant and others proclaimed that Krishnamurti was to be a world teacher whose coming the Theosophists had predicted. To prepare the world for this coming, a world-wide organization called the Order
Waiting for Superman: Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim reminds us that education "statistics" have names: Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, whose stories make up the engrossing foundation of WAITING FOR SUPERMAN. As he follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth, Guggenheim undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, su
"Brian Deer, a journalist writing for Murdoch's Sunday Times, was the only person in the world to complain to a regulatory body about the work of doctors at the Royal Free Hospital in London who diagnosed children with Inflammatory Bowel Disease, which their parents suggested had occurred following MMR vaccination.In 2003, after 10 years work, legal aid was withdrawn from over 1,000 parents cl
Following up on his 2006 documentary, The Most Hated Family in America, Louis Theroux returns to Topeka, Kansas, for a week-long visit with the Westboro Baptist Church.He again joins the Phelps family on their controversial pickets where they try to antagonise communities with offensive slogans and anti-gay placards. But five years on from Louis’s last visit, there are signs of disarray in the P
Getting into North Korea was one of the hardest and weirdest processes VBS has ever dealt with."After we went back and forth with their representatives for months, they finally said they were going to allow 16 journalists into the country to cover the Arirang Mass Games in Pyongyang.Then, ten days before we were supposed to go, they said, No, nobody can come. Then they said, OK, OK, you ca
This animated and real life documentary addresses the issues of child trafficking and begging by the Karamojong women in Uganda. We follow the story of Lucia Nayep with her children in the city, and their return to Karamojaland. We talk to the City Council in Kampala, the MP for central Karamojaland, elders from the village and let the women who are trafficking the children justify themselves. Des