Early in the 20th Century, individuals who suffered from mental illness had little hope of recovery. Psychiatric medications had yet to be discovered, and the afflicted were often locked away in overcrowded asylums. In 1935 a radical new medical procedure, called a lobotomy, was being performed on the most severely mentally ill. Initially this form of brain surgery appeared to offer hope for patie
John Rogers' film looks at the city we deny and the future city that awaits us. Leading London writers and cultural commentators Will Self, Iain Sinclair and Russell Brand explore the importance of the liminal spaces at the city's fringe, its Edgelands, through the work of enigmatic and downright eccentric writer and researcher Nick Papadimitriou - a man whose life is dedicated to exploring and ar
Could it be that Nostradamus, the “go to” prophet of all time, is reaching forward into the 21st century to give us a last warning? Is it already too late? In 1994, Italian journalist Enza Massa was at the Italian National Library in Rome conducting research on old texts, when she stumbled upon an unusual find in its stacks; a mysterious manuscript dating to 1629. The name of the book was surprisi
Thanks to Hung for suggesting this documentary. Old heresies die hard! The discovery of ancient texts such as the Gospel of Judas has sparked renewed interest in many ideas rejected by the early church. This documentary uncovers the truth behind the supposed "secrets" of Gnosticism. Featuring interviews with leading historians and scholars, it examines Gnosticism's origins, its early influence---a
For 2,000 years Europe has been divided by war, each passing century marked with the blood of endless conflict, sometimes religious, always political and never resolved, finally this never ending conflict exploded engulfing the world. It seems absurd that nearly all this bloodshed can be traced back to a single battle, but it can. A battle that few Europeans remember but no Roman was allowed to fo
This is a pyramid that ranks as one of the largest in the world, period. It’s one that covers on the surface of the mound it covers like 15 football fields. The volume of it is some, we calculate something like two million cubic meters of material. The magnificent ancient city of pyramids at Caral in Peru hit the headlines in 2001. The site is a thousand years older than the earliest known civiliz
The most famous death in history is the death of Jesus of Nazareth. 2,000 years ago in first century Jerusalem he was crucified by the Romans, the Gospels tell us he was buried in a tomb and two days later Marry Magdalene one of his closest disciples found the tomb empty.But according the Gospel of Mathew there was another story circulating after Jesus's death and though gospel calls it a lie
We like to think that humans are special, and we are but we are not one of a kind. The past thirty to frothy thousand years in human history have been really unique in the sense that we are alone on our planet. Earlier than this and there were always different types of humans around, those that we met and mixed with.Thanks to well preserved DNA we now know that there were at least four
This is the incredibly strange tale of Howard and his wife Kathy Walmsley, you see one day back in the late 90's Howard told Kathy a little lie, he claimed to have won an £8.9 million jackpot on the British National Lottery and Kathy believed him. As a result the two went on a shopping spree, buying fast cars, a dream home and a lifestyle fit for a multi-millionaire but it was all o