Control Room

Thanks to Nik for suggesting this one. Startling and powerful, Control Room is a documentary about the Arab television network Al-Jazeera's coverage of the U.S.-led Iraqi war, and conflicts that arose in managed perceptions of truth between that news media outlet and the American military.




Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim catches the frantic action at Al-Jazeera headquarters as President Bush stipulates his 48-hour, get-out-of-town warning to Saddam Hussein and sons, soon followed by the network's shocking footage of Iraqi civilians terrorized and killed by invading U.S. troops.

Al-Jazeera's determination to show images and report details outside the Pentagon's carefully controlled information flow draws the wrath of American officials, who accuse it of being an al-Qaida propagandist. Most fascinating is the way Control Room allows well-meaning, Western-educated, pro-democratic Arabs an opportunity to express views on Iraq as they see it - in an international context, and in a way most Americans never hear about.

Moon Mysteries

Drifting further from Earth, the Moon has created seasons, the 24-hour day, tides and perhaps even influenced evolution. Is the moon powerful enough to trigger natural disasters? Can the moon influence human behavior? This documentary puts a tightly-focused lens on the mysteries of the moon.




Without the moon in its regular orbit around the planet, would life exist on Earth? Or would the climate teeter between cataclysmic extremes? Today, the moon shines brightly in the night sky from about a quarter of a million miles away.

Watch Moon Mysteries - National Geographic in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

When it first formed though, it was 15 times closer to Earth and its gravity had a tremendous influence on the planet. Slowly drifting further away from Earth, the moon has reshaped the world. It created seasons, the 24-hour day, tides and may have even influenced the evolution of life here on Earth.

Oceans

What lies below the frozen Arctic ice-sheets? Or in the black holes under the Caribbean Sea? The oceans are Earth's single most important feature. They shape our climate, our culture, our future. Yet we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about Earth's watery depths.




Explorer Paul Rose leads a team of ocean experts in a series of global science expeditions. With him, maritime archaeologist Dr Lucy Blue investigates our past and our relationship with the sea, exploring shipwrecks and lost civilisations; marine biologist and Oceanographer Tooni Mahto seeks the extraordinary life in our oceans today; and environmentalist Philippe Cousteau Jr looks to the future of our oceans and charts the way they're changing.

PART ONE - Sea of Cortez

Watch Oceans - Episode 1 - Sea of Cortez.mov in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

PART TWO - Southern Ocean

Watch Oceans - Episode 2 - Southern Ocean.mov in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

PART THREE - Red Sea

Watch Oceans - Episode 3 - Red Sea.mov in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

PART FOUR - Atlantic Ocean

Watch Oceans - Episode 4 - Atlantic Ocean.mov in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

PART FIVE - Indian Ocean

Watch Oceans - Episode 5 - Indian Ocean.mov in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

PART SIX - Not available yet!

PART SEVEN - Mediterranean Sea

Watch Oceans - Episode 7 - Mediterranean Sea in Educational & How-To | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

PART EIGHT - Not available yet!

Filmed in High Definition in some of the most beautiful, diverse and threatened seas on our planet, the team travels across the world to the Southern Ocean, the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Sea of Cortez, the Arctic Ocean and the Mediterranean, to dive the depths of the world's seas and oceans. The planet's seas are changing fast and Oceans builds up a timely global picture of our planet's most magnificent and vital asset.

Click here to visit the official website.

The Boy With The Incredible Brain

Daniel Tammet is a twenty-something with extraordinary mental abilities, Daniel is one of the world’s few savants. He can do calculations to 100 decimal places in his head, and learn a language in a week. This documentary follows Daniel as he travels to America to meet the scientists who are convinced he may hold the key to unlocking similar abilities in everyone. He also meets the world’s most famous savant, the man who inspired Dustin Hoffman’s character in the Oscar winning film ‘Rain Man’.




As a baby, Daniel cried constantly and banged his head against the wall. His parents were frantic but all doctors could suggest was that he was understimulated. One afternoon when he was four, an accident changed the way Daniel thought forever. While playing with his brother in the living room he suffered a series of epileptic seizures which transformed his brain chemistry, giving him the gift of synaesthesia.

This condition occurs when the parts of the brain responsible for different areas of perception get mixed up. Brain scans of autistic savants suggest that the right hemisphere might be compensating for damage in the left hemisphere. While many savants struggle with language and comprehension - skills associated primarily with the left hemisphere - they often have amazing skills in mathematics and memory - primarily right hemisphere skills. Daniel began to respond emotionally to numbers, which he started to ‘see’ as complex, beautiful shapes and textures.

Jonestown - The Final Report

This documentary looks at the tragic death of 913 men, women and children who lived in a religious compound in the jungles of Guyana, South America, and investigates leader Jim Jones and his message of brotherhood and social justice.




Wiki has this to say about Jonestown...

Jonestown was the informal name for the "Peoples Temple Agricultural Project", an intentional community in northwestern Guyana formed by the Peoples Temple, a cult from California, United States, led by Jim Jones. It became internationally notorious in November 1978, when 918 people died in the settlement as well as in a nearby airstrip and in Georgetown, Guyana's capital. The name of the settlement became synonymous with the incidents at those locations.

On November 18, 1978, 909 Temple members died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning in an event termed "revolutionary suicide" by Jones and some members on an audio tape of the event and in prior discussions. To the extent the actions in Jonestown were viewed as a mass suicide, it is the largest such event in modern history and resulted in the largest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001. The poisonings in Jonestown followed the murder of five others by Temple members at a nearby Port Kaituma airstrip. The victims included Congressman Leo Ryan, the first and only Congressman murdered in the line of duty in the history of the United States.

The Human Senses

Nearly everyone has experienced a moment when a faint fragrance brings a memory of a long-lost moment in time crashing back to the forefront of their minds.Often we will have forgotten about the event completely, yet it transpires our unfathomable minds have filed it neatly in some unreachable corner of the brain, primed for instant retrieval.




This documentary sets out to discover the biological reasons why humans eat such a range of diverse tasting dishes, from rotten raw ducks eggs to a sweaty blue cheese, and watch while contestants at chilli eating contest push their taste buds to the limit. Compared to many animals, humans have a ‘try anything once’ attitude to food and this has allowed us to populate every corner of the planet, while many other animals depend totally on one food source for their energy, which limits where they can survive.

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

Watch Programme 3 - Touch and Vision in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Humans are very sensitive to touch and different parts of our body have different sensitivities. In fact, when it comes to our sense of touch, humans are similar to elephants.We have a few areas where we are extremely sensitive, just like the elephant's trunk, and the rest of our body is surprisingly insensitive, like the elephant's thick hide. The different density of touch sensors in the skin, in different parts of the body, explains why some parts of the body seem to have a much lower pain threshold. A microscopic splinter in a finger can be extremely painful, while a
cut on your leg may not hurt as much!