"Shopping malls have really become the centers of many communities. Children, as well as adults, see a shopping center as just the natural destination to fill a bored life."

Through revealing personal stories, expert commentary, hilarious old film clips, dramatized vignettes, and "anti-commercial" breaks, Affluenza examines the high cost of achieving the most extravagant lifestyle the world has ever seen.

Last year, Americans, who make up only five percent of the world's population, used nearly a third of its resources and produced almost half of its hazardous waste. Add overwork, personal stress, the erosion of family and community, skyrocketing debt, and the growing gap between rich and poor, and it's easy to understand why some people say that the American Dream is no bargain. Many are opting out of the consumer chase, redefining the Dream, and making "voluntary simplicity" one of the top 10 trends of the '90s.

Affluenza travels across the country to show you men and women who are working and shopping less, spending more time with friends and family, volunteering in their communities, and enjoying their lives more. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.pbs.org

"This simple test carried out over just two days pushed six willing participants to the limit of their endurance. Its' conclusions raise serious questions about practices of imprisonments and information gathering - techniques that have become all too common throughout the world."

You are about to witness a controversial experiment, one that delves deep into the human brain. Six ordinary people will face total sensory deprivation, all in the name of science. We live in a dangerous era where solitary confinement and sensory deprivation are sometimes used as punishment, even as political tools. Yet science is just beginning to investigate the impact of total isolation on the mind. Using the latest technology and an all too real simulation, scientists hope to answer a question as old as imprisonment itself: what happens inside your brain when you are left truly alone? (Excerpt from film)

"The real war is the war on consciousness. It's very important to always remember that ...Mind control is ubiquitous. It's almost a question of who is not mind controlled, as opposed to who is mind controlled. It's just a difference in degree. The whole question of what is consciousness and how it can be manipulated is one of the most crucial questions of our time."

Produced by Michael Tsarion and Blue Fire Film, Architects of Control: Program One, explores humankind’s future and the posthuman world. Will the “perfect” human be a dumbed down, regimented inhabitant of a cyber purgatory created by unseen elites? Will the children of tomorrow be smiling depressives of a technocratic dystopia?

Subjects Include: Jim Keith, Mass Control, Mind Control and its History, Radiotronic Weaponry, Psychic Dictatorship, Mass Ritual Killings, The Men in White, Operation Cointelpro, Operation Chaos, Teen Rage, School Shootings, Media Manipulation, Sleeper Assassins, Project Monarch and MK Ultra, Operation Paperclip, Sorcery and Magic, The Cult of Dionysus, People’s Champions, Astro-Theology, The Anatomy of Thought, Tragedy: Catalyst of Change, Global Awakening, The Myth of Progress, The Global Village, The Inauthentic Life, Drugged, Medicated, and Under Control, The Deconstruction Cycle, The Rise and Fall of Civilizations, The Death of Emotion, The Posthuman World Initiated, 2012: The Age of Revealing, Civilization: Rise and Fall, Psychic Hygiene, The Sane and the Unsane (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.architectsofcontrol.com/

"30% of us will leave our bodies, float down a tunnel which is usually dark and black and at the end of it you see a bright spot of light. You’re flowing, float into the light. You will quite often meet a being of light in the light and have a conversation with him, and then you may go into this beautiful English garden - lovely colors, flowers, wonderful. Then you may meet people who died, you sometimes even meet living people, and then you come to a decision point – it’s a bridge or a gate – and you know if you go on through that, then you’ll die. And at that point, you’re either sent back by the being of light or you go back by the being of light."

On the border between life and death, people report extraordinary experiences. Those who have returned from the very edge of death describe seeing visions of another world. For some it's heaven, for others hell. But is the near death experience a glimpse of the afterlife or does it provide a powerful insight into the mysteries of the brain.

The near death experience doesn't just offer glimpses to heaven and hell, it's also pushing boundaries of research into the science of the mind. Scientists want to know what a near death experience has in common with the effects with high gravitational forces and hallucinogenic drugs on the human brain. Doctors too are trying to find an explanation to this mystery phenomenon. (Excerpt from film)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.bbcprograms.com

"At the end of the synthesis, I got in a very strange psychic situation, a kind of dream world appeared, a feeling of oneness with the world. A very strange experience which reminded me of an experience I had in childhood." –Albert Hoffman

There is more to reality than meets a normal eye.  Behind the curtain of everyday consciousness is hidden another unutterably strange universe. It's the world of mystical experiences and those who have been there describe the visit as the most significant event in their lives. Until recent times, it was a world known only to holy man, to saints, and perhaps to the insane.  Then a generation ago, this drug, LSD, escaped from the laboratory and was consumed by millions of young people. To some, it's a doorway to the mystical universe - chemical ecstasy, enlightenment in a bottle. To others it's a dangerous and subversive poison. The drug challenges our very conception of reality and its' turbulent history raises sharp questions about the dividing line between private experience and public policy. (Excerpt from film)

Please visit Max Whitby's official website for more information:
http://217.158.75.167

"The bigger question is whether we all have some of those abilities within us and that is what I refer to as the 'little rain man' in each of us."

This is the breathtaking story of Daniel Tammet. 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’. (Excerpt from video.google.com)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.five.tv

"In America today, there's a lot of heat around breasts. But in so many places around the world, breasts are, well, breasts just are. They're functional, natural, normal, and out there. What I want to know is: why are we so obsessed?"

Busting Out, a new documentary by filmmakers Francine Strickwerda and Laurel Spellman Smith, explores the history and politics of breast obsession in America. The film is a disarmingly honest and intimate exploration of our society's attitudes towards breasts and how they affect women’s health and happiness. Busting Out's great strength is that it manages to combine personal story-telling with devastating analysis, sad case histories with humor, and frank talk of sexual subjects with sweet innocence.

Busting Out challenges both women and men to think about breasts in new ways, question what the culture tells us about breasts, and understand who’s profiting from our attitudes and who is being harmed. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.stiritup.com/index.php

"This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." –Adam Curtis

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed the perception of the human mind and its workings profoundly. His influence on the 20th century is widely regarded as massive. The documentary describes the impact of Freud's theories on the perception of the human mind, and the ways public relations agencies and politicians have used this during the last 100 years for their "engineering of consent".

Among the main characters are Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in advertising. He is often seen as the "father of the public relations industry". Freud's daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in the second part, as well as Wilhelm Reich, one of the main opponents of Freud's theories.

Along these general themes, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism, representative democracy and its implications. It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitude to fashion and superficiality. (Excerpt from Wikipedia)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk

"Is it possible that it's not really about meth; it's about severly damaged people, people from traumatic backgrounds, and they'll find something to medicate themselves with no matter what?"

Central Valley, California, is home to some of the most impoverished rural towns in America, where crystal meth addiction is prolific. In Fresno, Louis finds a community ravaged by this cheap and highly addictive drug.

As he infiltrates the town, he experiences the reality of meth abuse, as addicts who are high (or 'tweaking', as it is known) invite him into their homes to see them take hit after hit of their favourite drug. Louis becomes surrounded by the madness of daily addiction and the meth-addled confusion which is breaking this community apart.

He sees its impact through the eyes of the local police, and meets Diane and Karl, a couple who have sustained their marriage despite a 25-year meth addiction and losing custody of their five children. He witnesses arrests of sons doing meth with their mothers, and family after family broken apart from generations of meth abuse. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk

"I watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turned into nasty, vicious, discriminating little third graders in the space of fifteen minutes." –Jane Elliot

On the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in April 1968, Jane Elliott's third graders from the small, all-white town of Riceville, Iowa, came to class confused and upset. They recently had made King their "Hero of the Month," and they couldn't understand why someone would kill him. So Elliott decided to teach her class a daring lesson in the meaning of discrimination. She wanted to show her pupils what discrimination feels like, and what it can do to people.

Elliott divided her class by eye color -- those with blue eyes and those with brown. On the first day, the blue-eyed children were told they were smarter, nicer, neater, and better than those with brown eyes. Throughout the day, Elliott praised them and allowed them privileges such as a taking a longer recess and being first in the lunch line. In contrast, the brown-eyed children had to wear collars around their necks and their behavior and performance were criticized and ridiculed by Elliott. On the second day, the roles were reversed and the blue-eyed children were made to feel inferior while the brown eyes were designated the dominant group.

What happened over the course of the unique two-day exercise astonished both students and teacher. On both days, children who were designated as inferior took on the look and behavior of genuinely inferior students, performing poorly on tests and other work. In contrast, the "superior" students -- students who had been sweet and tolerant before the exercise -- became mean-spirited and seemed to like discriminating against the "inferior" group. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.pbs.org

"This is a lot more than about selling products and services. If we care about nourishing the human spirit – if we care about human relationships – then we’ve got to care about this issue." –Enola Aird

Consuming Kids throws desperately needed light on the practices of a relentless multi-billion dollar marketing machine that now sells kids and their parents everything from junk food and violent video games to bogus educational products and the family car. Drawing on the insights of health care professionals, children's advocates, and industry insiders, the film focuses on the explosive growth of child marketing in the wake of deregulation, showing how youth marketers have used the latest advances in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to transform American children into one of the most powerful and profitable consumer demographics in the world. Consuming Kids pushes back against the wholesale commercialization of childhood, raising urgent questions about the ethics of children's marketing and its impact on the health and well-being of kids. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.mediaed.org

"[Dr. Rick Strassman's] pioneering has raised some very important questions about the pineal gland and its' interaction with a strange hallucinogenic chemical known as DMT. Could the interaction of these two components be the seat of consciousness? Could it in fact be the gate through which we enter and leave each new life?"

THE SPIRIT MOLECULE weaves an account of Dr. Rick Strassman's groundbreaking DMT research through a multifaceted approach to this intriguing hallucinogen found in the human brain and hundreds of plants. Utilizing interviews with a variety of experts to explain their thoughts and experiences with DMT within their respective fields, and discussions with Strassman’s research volunteers brings to life the awesome effects of this compound, and far-reaching theories regarding its role in human consciousness.

Several themes explored include possible roles for endogenous DMT; its theoretical role in near-death and birth experiences, alien-abduction experiences; and the uncanny similarities in Biblical prophetic texts describing DMT-like experiences. Our expert contributors offer a comprehensive collection of information, opinions, and speculation about indigenous use of DMT, the history and future of psychedelic research, and current DMT research. All this, to help us understand the nature of the DMT experience, and its role in human society and evolution.

The subtle combination of science, spirituality, and philosophy within the film’s approach sheds light on an array of ideas that could considerably alter the way humans understand the universe and their relationship to it. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.thespiritmolecule.com

"Being an Israeli Jew, I had never experienced anti-Semitism myself, but it's a phrase that always seems to be in the air. Three words seem to appear over and over again: Holocaust, Nazi, anti-Semitism. Living in a country that was founded to give the Jewish people a safe place to live in, I found this really disturbing so I decided that I wanted to learn more about the subject." –Yoav Shamir, Director

What is anti-Semitism today, two generations after the Holocaust? In his continuing exploration of modern Israeli life, director Yoav Shamir (Checkpoint, 5 Days, Flipping Out) travels the world in search of the most modern manifestations of the “oldest hatred", and comes up with some startling answers.

In this irreverent quest, he follows American Jewish leaders to the capitals of Europe, as they warn government officials of the growing threat of anti-Semitism, and he tacks on to a class of Israeli high school students on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz.

On his way, Shamir meets controversial historian, Norman Finkelstein, who offers his unpopular views on the manner that anti-Semitism is being used by the Jewish community and especially Israel for political gain. He also joins scholars, Stephen M. Walt and John J. Mearsheimer, while they give a lecture in Israel following the release of their book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, about the un-proportional influence the Israel lobby in Washington enjoys. Yoav visits Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, the must stop for all world leaders on their visits to Israel. While in Jerusalem, he drops by the house of his grandmother that offers her insight on the issue and declares that she is the “real Jew”. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.defamation-thefilm.eu

"When someone talks to James he doesn't just hear the words, he also tastes them. John sees colors when he hears numbers. And Heather is able to make quick calculations because she literally sees her numbers around her. They all have a bizarre condition called synesthesia, in which their senses are joined up."

Imagine if every time you saw someone called Derek you got a strong taste of earwax in your mouth. It happens to James Wannerton, who runs a pub. Derek is one of his regulars. Another regular's name gives him the taste of wet nappies. For some puzzling reason, James's sense of sound and taste are intermingled.

Dorothy Latham sees words as colours. Whenever she reads a black and white text, she sees each letter tinged in the shade of her own multi-coloured alphabet - even though she knows the reality of the text is black and white. Spoken words have an even stranger effect. She sees them, spelled out letter by letter, on a colourful tickertape in front of her head.

Both James and Dorothy have a mysterious condition called synaesthesia, in which their senses have become linked. For years scientists dismissed it, putting it in the same category as séances and spoon-bending. But now, synaesthesia is sparking a revolution in our understanding of the human mind. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk

"Professor Valentino found that while dyslexic children do make more mistakes than their peers, they do not make more mistakes than younger children reading at the same level."

Dispatches exposes the myths and misconceptions that surround a condition said to affect 10 per cent of the population. The Dyslexia Myth argues that the common understanding of dyslexia is not only false but makes it more difficult to provide the reading help that hundreds of thousands of children desperately need.

Drawing on years of intensive academic research on both sides of the Atlantic, Dispatches challenges the existence of dyslexia as a separate condition; but in doing so, reveals the scale and pain of true reading disability. The programme examines the chasm between evidence and educational practice and shows that, after hundreds of millions of pounds of investment in the teaching of reading, the number of children encountering serious problems has hardly changed. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.channel4.com

"When Baghdad exploded under bombs, television chose to bring us fireworks. But does this distant and spectacular image tell us what is really happening on the ground, how it feels or what it means? Television has the means to take us anywhere and show us anything. It can bring us the physical experience of war with all its' horrors, like no other medium, and yet the image of American war on television is disembodied, bloodless, and unreal."

The invasion of Iraq was the most closely documented war ever fought. Lasting only 800 hours, it produced 20,000 hours of video, but those images were tightly controlled, producing a monolithic view of combat sanitised and controlled by the Pentagon.

Enemy Image traces the ways us television has covered war, starting with Vietnam in the 1960s and shows how the military has devised ever-improving means of ensuring the American public never again has the real face of combat beamed directly into their living rooms. Comparing footage of Vietnam, including rarely-seen material shot in North Vietnam, to coverage of Iraq and using extensive interviews with veteran war correspondents and news anchors, Mark Daniels demonstrates how television that once revealed the truth is now increasingly used to hide it. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.cbc.ca

"This all may start making more sense when you start understanding that common citizens aren't meant to know what is happening at the top. Is there any dispute that to gain power in our day in age, it takes strategy and intelligence rather than brute force? Logic will tell you that in any sport or game, to claim victory, you must keep your moves strategic and secret. Why would it be any different in global politics?"

The more humanity strays from its’ origin, the more we deny our bond with nature, the farther from perfection we become. We are the only creatures on the planet that use symbols in reference to something else. We use symbols for absolutely everything the mind can conceive of.  There is at least one word or icon or gesture to insinuate everything our five senses can detect and then some.  But along with this beautiful gift comes a flaw. Most people are unwilling to seek and create their own interpretations of these symbols.  Instead, they blindly submit to preconceived definitions and connotations given by sources unknown. Because of this, many things have been predetermined in our understanding of life without our knowledge. Words can be perverted and used to manipulate rather than to inform. Symbols can be used to segregate rather than unite. And those given the responsibility and authority to disseminate information to the public possess the ability to do with it as they choose. (Excerpt from film)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.talismanicidols.org

"Let thy Food be thy Medicine and thy Medicine be thy Food." –Hippocrates

With nutritionally-depleted foods, chemical additives and our tendency to rely upon pharmaceutical drugs to treat what's wrong with our malnourished bodies, it's no wonder that modern society is getting sicker. Food Matters sets about uncovering the trillion dollar worldwide 'sickness industry' and gives people some scientifically verifiable solutions for overcoming illness naturally.

"With access to better information people invariably
make better choices for their health..."

In what promises to be the most contentious idea put forward, the filmmakers have interviewed several leading experts in nutrition and natural healing who claim that not only are we harming our bodies with improper nutrition, but that the right kind of foods, supplements and detoxification can be used to treat chronic illnesses as fatal as terminally diagnosed cancer.

The focus of the film is in helping us rethink the belief systems fed to us by our modern medical and health care establishments. The interviewees point out that not every problem requires costly, major medical attention and reveal many alternative therapies that can be more effective, more economical, less harmful and less invasive than conventional medical treatments.

The ‘Food Matters' duo have independently funded the film from start to finish in order to remain as unbiased as possible, delivering a clear and concise message to the world. Food Matters. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.foodmatters.tv

"[A]lways there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face ... forever." –George Orwell

George Orwell – A Life in Pictures uses a bold and original approach to put him on the screen. Chris Langham plays the writer and every word he speaks is as written by Orwell himself. But the pictures are all ‘invented’ – a specially created ‘archive’ because there’s not a single frame of archive footage of Orwell in existence. Not even one word or one of his trademark hacking coughs on recorded audio. All that is left is one oil painting and a couple of hundred photographs. By bringing to life his extraordinary treasure trove of writing - nine books and some eight thousand pages of journalism, essays, diaries and letters – the film creates a unique dramatised biography of Orwell. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.walltowall.co.uk

"These people suffer from one of the strangest of all brain disorders. It makes them think they have been touched by god. But their unusual condition is giving scientists a unique insight into faith and the human mind. As a result researchers are now asking one of them most explosive questions of all - could it be that the physical makeup of our brain programmes us to believe in god?"

Rudi Affolter and Gwen Tighe have both experienced strong religious visions. He is an atheist; she a Christian. He thought he had died; she thought she had given birth to Jesus. Both have temporal lobe epilepsy.

Like other forms of epilepsy, the condition causes fitting but it is also associated with religious hallucinations. Research into why people like Rudi and Gwen saw what they did has opened up a whole field of brain science: neurotheology.

The connection between the temporal lobes of the brain and religious feeling has led one Canadian scientist to try stimulating them. (They are near your ears.) 80% of Dr Michael Persinger's experimental subjects report that an artificial magnetic field focused on those brain areas gives them a feeling of 'not being alone'. Some of them describe it as a religious sensation.

His work raises the prospect that we are programmed to believe in god, that faith is a mental ability humans have developed or been given. And temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) could help unlock the mystery. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk

"No one knows for certain what causes stammering. It could be genetic, it could simply be bad luck, or it could be triggered by a traumatic event. We spent a year with three young people who were determined to overcome their stammers."

This film follows the extraordinary story of stuttering children struggling to break out of their isolation and learn to speak. Stuttering, also known as stammering in the United Kingdom, is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases; and involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the stutterer is unable to produce sounds. The term stuttering is most commonly associated with involuntary sound repetition, but it also encompasses the abnormal hesitation or pausing before speech, referred to by stutterers as blocks, and the prolongation of certain sounds, usually vowels. Much of what constitutes "stuttering" cannot be observed by the listener; this includes such things as sound and word fears, situational fears, anxiety, tension, self-pity, stress, shame, and a feeling of "loss of control" during speech. The emotional state of the individual who stutters in response to the stuttering often constitutes the most difficult aspect of the disorder. No single, exclusive cause of stuttering is known. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.channel4.com

"I think the possibility to have psychedelic experience is inborn. These psychedelics - very similar compounds are in our brain. In all the compounds that you find in the plant kingdom, all these psychedelics are so closely related chemically to those brain factors which we already have." –Dr.Albert Hofmann

Hofmann's Potion traces D-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) from its initial discovery in 1943 by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann, through its heyday in the 1960s counterculture, to its present status as a banned or controlled substance in many Western countries. The film offers a sensitive and sympathetic portrayal of the chemists, biochemists, psychiatrists, and psychologists in the 1940s and '50s who privileged the model of mental illness based on brain chemistry over and above the psychoanalytic model in vogue at that time. Stationed in Canada, the United States, England, and Czechoslovakia, these pioneers made unprecedented advancements in treating various mental illnesses with LSD. Yet despite the rigorous standards the researchers adhered to, their groundbreaking work was choked out by the negative publicity that cropped up around amateurish thrill-seekers on LSD in the 1960s. (Excerpt from website)

Please visit site for more information:
http://umanitoba.ca

"A U.S. market research company, Western International Media released a study called "Parents Nagging Kids and Purchase Decisions." It wasn't a study to help parents cope with nagging, it was a study to help corporations help children nag more effectively...so they encourage companies to put a reason, to give a kid some reason in the commercial to be able to tell their parents why they needed this particular product."

The fight for your children's money & influence.

In the last 10 years, corporations have doubled what they spend marketing to your children. It's no wonder. Children influence 62% of family purchases - everything from snack food to cameras to cars. Kids under twelve are at the epicentre of consumer culture.

There is gold in the hills, and marketers know your children will lead the way. So, they spend billions of dollars every year, on the premise that a tug of your heartstrings will mobilize your purse strings. And they've unleashed an army of market researchers to help them accomplish their mission. The kids have taken over.

It's all been made possible through a dramatic shift in parenting style, which has parents dictating less and listening more, and ageneration of under twelve's that is more numerous and more affluent than the Baby Boomers. This is a marketing culture where companies are moving far beyond traditional boundaries, coining terms like "the infant niche market" and "cradle-to-grave brand loyalty." Psychologists and anti-marketers have been waving a red flag for years, and now they're dressing for battle. Meet the players who have helped the kids take over. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.cbc.ca

"Increasingly what we're seeing today, in movies and in the news, which is a major disseminator of the dominant ideology, you're seeing the black male as rapist, as drug abuser, as murderer. Basically, as a major threat to white suburban life." –Gail Dines, Ph.D

This award-winning documentary links everyday black men from various socioeconomic backgrounds with some of Black America's most progressive academics, social critics and authors to provide an engaging, candid dialogue on black masculine identity in American culture. Featuring interviews with bell hooks, Michael Eric Dyson, John Henrick Clarke, Dr. Alvin Poussaint, MC Hammer, and others.

Sections: Introduction | Images | The Cool Pose | Emotions | Black Male Homosexuality | Black Males: Violence and Fears | Sexism: Men's Violence Against Women | Fathers | The Future (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.mediaed.org

"The vast majority of psychopaths, like an iceberg, are under the water and like an iceberg, they are inert; they do nothing, they're just there. They torment the spouse by being un-empathetic, but they don't beat her or kill her. They bully co-workers, but they don't burn down the office. They are not dramatic. They are pernicious. Most psychopaths are subtle. They are more like poison than the knife and they are more like slow working poison than cyanide." –Sam Vaknin, self-aware psychopath

Psychopaths...we usually only know them from Hollywood movies. We never expect them to enter our real life. But, the psychopath is closer than you think. Experts believe their number to be as high as one in a hundred. Most of them function incognito in high-powered professions...all the way to the very top.

ABut...it takes one to truly know one. In this intriguing documentary, Sam Vaknin, a self-proclaimed psychopath, goes in search of a diagnosis. In a scientific first, he allows himself to undergo testing to find out if he was born without a conscience. He knows he's narcissistic and cannot empathize with others. By his own admission, he's pompous, grandiose, repulsive and contradictory, ruthless and devoid of scruples, capricious and unfathomable... but he believes, he's not a bad person. What he is is indifferent...he couldn't care less. Unless, of course, the topic is himself.

Vaknin and his long-suffering but ever-loyal wife, Lidija, embark on a diagnostic road trip. But, it's uncharted territory...deep into the mind and life of a psychopath. The 47-year-old convicted corporate criminal has agreed to take part in the pursuit of his own diagnosis...meeting the world's experts in psychopathy in the hope that science will provide some answers for why he is like he is. These experts put Vaknin (and his wife) through a battery of rigorous psychological tests and neuro-scientific experiments.

Vaknin is shocked at the results.

Sam, his wife, the scientists, the film-makers - will they ever be quite the same again? (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.cbc.ca

"I think it's a fact of life that people have always altered their consciousness and they're going to continue doing so. And therefore, we as a society need to get a very firm grip on the relative harms of the different substances which we need to teach to our children, and rather than forbid - we need to educate."

Recent research has analysed the link between the harmful effects of drugs relative to their current classification by law with some startling conclusions. Perhaps most startling of all is that alcohol, solvents and tobacco (all unclassified drugs) are rated more dangerous than ecstasy, 4-MTA and LSD (all class A drugs). If the current ABC system is retained, alcohol would be rated a class A drug and tobacco class B.

The scientists involved, including members of the government's top advisory committee on drug classification, have produced a rigorous assessment of the social and individual harm caused by 20 of the UK's most dangerous drugs and believe this should form the basis of future ranking. They think the current ABC system is arbitrary and not based on any scientific evidence.

The drug policies have remained unchanged over the last 40 years so should they be reformed in the light of new research? (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk

"What I'm interested in is a little backwater, which are the plants that speak to us, the plants that tell us what they're good for, the plants that actually have something to say directly to the person taking them."

Lost in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, there is a vine that is said to talk to humans, giving an understanding to the secrets of life. The custodians of this plant are the medicine men, or shamans. The divine does not give up its' secrets easily.

It appears the botany of the plant is only half the story. To know it fully, you must experience its' effects. Ever since he discovered the talking plants, studying human sciences at University, he has experienced with the hallucinogenic flora. British plants are one thing, but in the Amazon they use Banisteriopsis caapi, or Ayahuasca, for their therapy and it's a strong medicine. The bitter Ayahuasca brew first makes its' drinker violently sick, but it's in the fierce and often terrifying hallucinations that follow that the healing is said to lie. But Ayahuasca doesn't work on its' own, rather it acts as a key to unlock the psychotropic qualities of another plant, and it's this plant that Piers is after. (Excerpt from film)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.keofilms.com

"To a great extent, advertising tells us who we are and who we should be. What does advertising tell us today about women? It tells us just as did it 10 and 20 and 30 years ago that what's most important about women is how we look. The first thing the advertisers do is surround us with the image of ideal female beauty so we all learn how important it is for a women to be beautiful and exactly what it takes." –Jean Kilbourne

Jean Kilbourne continues her groundbreaking analysis of advertising's depiction of women in this most recent update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series. In fascinating detail, Kilbourne decodes an array of print and television advertisements to reveal a pattern of disturbing and destructive gender stereotypes. Her analysis challenges us to consider the relationship between advertising and broader issues of culture, identity, sexism, and gender violence.

Sections: Does the beauty ideal still tyrannize women? | Does advertising still objectify women's bodies? | Are the twin themes of liberation and weight control still linked? | Is sexuality still presented as women's main concern? | Are young girls still sexualized? | Are grown women infantilized? | Are images of male violence against women still used to sell products? (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.mediaed.org

"And the problem I see with humanity today is we don't truly know ourselves anymore. We have the 9 to 5 job, we have the house, the children, the bills, the television, the hobbies, and the errands that we run every single day, and we eventually begin to believe that this is who we are. But who are we that needs the job title? That needs the status of mother or father? Theist or atheist? Republican or Democrat? Black or White? Man or Woman? Who are we? Who are we deep down inside? We don't know because every time we hear an answer that we don't want to accept about ourselves, we deny it. We'll pass it off and project it onto somebody else and judge them for it. This is repression. And we see what repression can do to us on an individual level, but what about on a collective level of humanity? What happens when the whole world refuses to see what they truly are in the inside?"

Evolution is a term to define only one organism and that's the self. The self is the universe, the self is the alpha and omega, god, and infinity, and that's the only thing that evolves because we are all part of the self. Nothing goes through an evolutionary process alone or without direct benefit to the whole.

So when you begin to think that there's this controlling elite, this controlling hand behind the curtains leading the planet to destruction. When you think the end is near, the apocalypse, Armageddon, and when you think we as a species are doomed, it is not they, it is you that brought this about, and for a very good reason. You are evolving. Stop blaming everybody and everything else. Quit panicking about global tyranny and natural disaster and pay attention, because the world is telling you something; it's tell you exactly what is wrong with you and how to fix it. (Excerpt from film)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.talismanicidols.org

"There’s something about the inherent tolerance of Buddhism that is inherently attractive. It's totally non-judgmental. There's no notion of sin, there's no notion of good and evil, there's only ignorance and suffering. And this is the most important thing, it places all emphasis on compassion; you do not embrace negativity."

Buddhism asks the fundamental question: What is life and what is the point of existence? Wade Davis goes on an anthropological and spiritual journey into the Himalayas of Nepal to learn the deepest lesson of Buddhist practice. Parts of this documentary feature H.H.Trulshik Rinpoche and Matthieu Ricard. (Excerpt from video.google.com)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.nationalgeographic.ca

"I would always be thinking of music and dying to get to the piano, or at school, dying to get home so I could run home, place my fingers on the keys, and just have a feeling of absolute delight. It was almost ecstatic. Everything that the piano gave me was satisfying my tourettes, and uniquely, the tourettes stopped as soon as I touched the keys. The ticks went away. It was a highly addictive wonderful drug that transformed me and I would transcend to this wonderful place where I was safe, I was happy, I accepted everything about myself and I loved it." –Nick von Bloss

Is there really such a thing as the mad genius? Can an illness be both a blessing and a curse?

At seven years old, Nick van Bloss started shaking his head, grinding his teeth and making wild whooping noises. Nick had Tourette's syndrome. No medical intervention helped him. But one activity stopped it all...

The moment Nick placed his hands on the piano keys his symptoms vanished. By the age of 20, he was an award winning international pianist. He felt sure that his illness had made him the success he was.

But there is a catch. The brain state necessary for his genius can also be dangerously close to mental chaos. Nick's personal journey reveals how close he came to the edge and how determined he is to triumph.(Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always."

This is a film which seeks to tell the life-story of Gandhi the Man and his incessant search for Truth.

In this world so full of hatred and violence, this man of peace and goodwill fought all evil and injustice with Soul-Force. He stands out as a challenge giving the message of truth and non-violence, of love supreme and unbounded. He is the Mahatma - the Great Soul - the name given to him by the people of India.

Gandhi has left an indelible mark on human history. His thought is ever relevant for all those who aspire for a better and fuller life.

The Gandhi National Memorial Trust has made a humble attempt to perpetuate Gandhi's memory by presenting the first complete biographical documentary film of his life which, in a large measure, reflects the history of India's struggle for freedom. Animation, live photography and old prints, have been blended to give an integrated image of his life. Some of the material is bound to be technically imperfect but it is an authentic portrayal of history. The story too is narrated in all simplicity and dignity using mostly Gandhi's own words.

Even a full-length documentary film is but an inadequate instrument for depicting Gandhi's many-splendoured life and his varied activities. Consistent with the aim of presenting a full picture, the length here was inevitable; shorter films depicting different aspects of his life will also be presented.

Many minds and many hands have laboured in making the film which took years to complete. The Trust is grateful to all who have helped this venture but most to its Honorary Director, Vithalbhai Jhaveri. This film is the result of his selfless dedication to the work and the full co-operation of the Films Division of the Government of India.

The Trust is happy to present Gandhi, who embodies the precious legacy of our land, to the world. For centuries to come, Gandhi's life will serve as a beacon to untold millions who will walk in certainty in the light that was kindled by him. (Excerpt from website)

Please visit site for more information:
http://www.gandhiserve.org

"Before these drugs were introduced in the market, people who had these conditions would not have been given any drugs at all. So it is the branding of a disease and it is the branding of a drug for a treament of a disease that did not exist before the industry made the disease."

Psychotropic drugs. It's the story of big money-drugs that fuel a $330 billion psychiatric industry, without a single cure. The cost in human terms is even greater-these drugs now kill an estimated 42,000 people every year. And the death count keeps rising. Containing more than 175 interviews with lawyers, mental health experts, the families of victims and the survivors themselves, this riveting documentary rips the mask off psychotropic drugging and exposes a brutal but well-entrenched money-making machine. (Excerpt from website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.cchr.org

"In a totalitarian state, it doesn't matter what people think, since the government can control people by force using a bludgeon. But when you can't control people by force, you have to control what people think, and the standard way to do this is via propaganda (manufacture of consent, creation of necessary illusions), marginalizing the general public or reducing them to apathy of some fashion." –Noam Chomsky

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992) is a documentary film that explores the political life and ideas of Noam Chomsky, a linguist, intellectual, and political activist. Created by two Canadian independent filmmakers, Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick, it expands on the ideas of Chomsky's earlier book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, which he co-wrote with Edward S. Herman.

The film presents and illustrates Chomsky's and Herman's propaganda model, the thesis that corporate media, as profit-driven institutions, tend to serve and further the agendas of the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society. A centerpiece of the film is a long examination into the history of The New York Times's coverage of Indonesia's invasion and occupation of East Timor, which Chomsky claims exemplifies the media's unwillingness to criticize an ally. (Excerpt from Wikipedia)

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http://en.wikipedia.org

"The psyche is the greatest of all cosmic wonders and the "sine qua non” of the world as an object. It is in the highest degree odd that Western man, with but very few – and ever fewer – exceptions, apparently pays so little regard to this fact. Swamped by the knowledge of external objects, the subject of all knowledge has been temporarily eclipsed to the point of seeming nonexistence.” –Carl G. Jung

Matter of Heart is a compelling portrait of Carl Gustav Jung, whose extraordinary genius and humanity reached far beyond the sometimes exclusive realm of psychiatry into redefining the essential nature of who we are and what we hope to become. More than a linear biography, the film presents a fuller perspective on this humanist, healer, friend, and mentor, through the skillful interweaving of rare home movies, valuable archival footage, and a wealth of interviews with such notables as Sir Laurens van der Post, Marie-Louise von Franz, and Joseph Henderson, M.D. (Excerpt from website)

Please visit site for more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung

"Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening." –Gurdjieff

In 1920, an unknown man appeared in Europe, having lived through some extraordinary experiences in the East; His name was Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. This is the story of his early years. The film was made on location in the forbidding, rarely photographed mountains and deserts of the Afghanistan, and has been widely acclaimed for its unique visual beauty. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.brookdvd.com

"Everything on MTV is a commercial, that is all that MTV is. Sometimes it's an explicit advertisement paid for by a company to sell a product. Sometimes it's going to be a video for a music company there to sell music. Sometimes it's going to be the set that's filled with trendy clothes and stuff there to sell a look that will include products on that set. Sometimes it will be a show about an upcoming movie paid for by the studio, though you don't know, to hype a movie that's coming out from Hollywood. But everything is an infomercial. There is no non-commercial part of MTV."

They spend their days sifting through reams of market research data. They conduct endless surveys and focus groups. They comb the streets, the schools, and the malls, hot on the trail of the "next big thing" that will snare the attention of their prey--a market segment worth an estimated $150 billion a year. They are the merchants of cool: creators and sellers of popular culture who have made teenagers the hottest consumer demographic in America. But are they simply reflecting teen desires or have they begun to manufacture those desires in a bid to secure this lucrative market? And have they gone too far in their attempts to reach the hearts--and wallets--of America's youth?

FRONTLINE correspondent Douglas Rushkoff examines the tactics, techniques, and cultural ramifications of these marketing moguls in "The Merchants of Cool." Produced by Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin, the program talks with top marketers, media executives and cultural/media critics, and explores the symbiotic relationship between the media and today's teens, as each looks to the other for their identity.

Teenagers are the hottest consumer demographic in America. At 33 million strong, they comprise the largest generation of teens America has ever seen--larger, even, than the much-ballyhooed Baby Boom generation. Last year, America's teens spent $100 billion, while influencing their parents' spending to the tune of another $50 billion. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.pbs.org

"In 2003 a new word was introduced into the English language: Militainment. We now consume war in much the same way we consume any other mode of entertainment. This has become a prominent feature of American life in the 20th Century. The blending of war an entertainment is not necessarily a new phenomenon. What is new is the massive collaboration between the Pentagon and the entertainment industries."

Militainment, Inc. offers a fascinating, disturbing, and timely glimpse into the militarization of American popular culture, examining how U.S. news coverage has come to resemble Hollywood film, video games, and "reality television" in its glamorization of war. Mobilizing an astonishing range of media examples - from news anchors' idolatry of military machinery to the impact of government propaganda on war reporting - the film asks: How has war taken its place in the culture as an entertainment spectacle? And how does presenting war as entertainment affect the ability of citizens to evaluate the necessity and real human costs of military action? The film is broken down into nine sections, each between 10 and 20 minutes in length, allo wing for in-depth classroom analysis of individual elements of this wide-ranging phenomenon. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the offical website for more information:
http://www.mediaed.org

"This is way out of the realm of fiction or supposition or conspiracy theory or speculation. This is absolute documented fact."

It is one of the ill-kept secrets of America's intelligence agencies--for decades, they have worked virtually non-stop to perfect means of controlling the human mind. But while many have suspected the existence of these projects, the details have long been preserved.

MIND CONTROL blows the lid off years of chilling experiments, drawing on documents reluctantly released through the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with some of the victims, including a woman whose past was literally taken away. Hear from John Marks, the author of In Search of the Manchurian Candidate, who broke the story of the CIA's abuses by unraveling the mysteries contained in financial records. All the other records pertaining to the experiments were destroyed by the agency in an attempt to prevent the details from ever being known.

After viewing this important program, you'll have reason to wonder about your own thoughts... (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the offical website for more information:
http://store.aetv.com

"The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses." –Malcolm X

This is a well researched documentary that exposes the "White" Media's long-term agenda to standardize Caucasian people as the "social norm" for general society. Through the globalization and centralization of the "White" media and its constant propagation of repetitive images depicting Caucasians in positive roles and as protagonists while usually depicting Non-Caucasians as background characters and antagonists -- which are often connected to negative themes and stereotypes -- the media elite have been able to effectively condition general society into subconsciously adhering to a racist social hierarchy in which Caucasian people are at the very apex.

The documentary addresses many modern-day internalized racist psychological dispositions (subconscious forms of internalized racism) which are unknowingly passed down from generation to generation due to the globalization and pervasiveness of "Whiteness" a cultural assimilation process of which, is directly derivative to historical European expansionism, colonialism, and imperialism. (Excerpt from video.google.com)

Please visit site for more information:
http://opposingdigits.com

"These weapons are more dangerous than atomic destruction. With knowledge of the brain, we may transform, we may shape, direct, robotosize man. I think the great danger of the future is that we will have roboticize human beings who are not aware that they have been roboticized." –Dr. Jose Delgado

The Phoenix Program, assassinating suspected VC sympathizers in a systematic manner, worked well during the Vietnam War and is the blueprint for the current black op targeting thousands of loyal Americans using state of the art microwave (MW) and radio frequency radiation (RFR) weapons. The motivation to suppress domestic dissidents and to assassinate loyal American opposition stems from the perception of dissent against the war as treason. This philosophy is stated very clearly in the MindWar paper written by NSA General Aquino. The DOD has a huge stake in futuristic technology that kills by ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, leaving little or no trace. The indiscriminant killing of the Phoenix Program continues on American soil. The terms soft kill, slow kill and silent kill refer to the new way of killing the enemy in conflicts short of war and the small wars of the future.

The counterinsurgency doctrine has now been applied to the home front, so that the perceived betrayal of the military in Vietnam will not be repeated. The generation of CIA and military intelligence led by Shackley, Helms, Casey, Abrams, Singlaub, Secord, John B. Alexander, Michael Aquino, Paul Vallely, and others have built the perfect beast, using selective assassination that leaves no trace. The ability to cull the human herd with Silent Kill technology allows a few personalities to remake the entire society in their own image. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the offical website for more information:
http://www.monarchnewphoenix.com

"Why have they become tormented and broken into different personalities? What is the childhood pain that lies buried in the unknown depths of their mind? How can they search for the deadly memories that holds the secrets of their paths and the promise of their healing?"

In early times, evil spirits were thought to possess people and make them act in strange and frightening ways. By the 1800's, the study of this hysteria led some doctors to believe one person could have separately functioning personalities. In this rare research film from the 1920's, a woman has different personalities who believes they are separate people. One is a male that is not comfortable in women's clothes. Another is a small child. The affliction has been known by different names, but recognized for centuries. Today it is called multiple personality disorder. (Excerpt from film)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.mierendorf.com

"We tend to assume that if some woman has larger breasts than she'll get much better treatment, but in actual fact, a lot of women that have big breasts talk about feeling very minimized about their identity being so bound up just in their sexuality that people don't take them seriously." –Dr.Linda Papadopoulos

Great Britain is home to the biggest breasts in all of Europe. But for many women, this isn't good news. In this documentary, meet three women who feel defined by their naturally big breasts, and find out what it's really like to have a cup size at the far end of the alphabet. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit website for more information:
http://www.bbcamerica.com

"Susan is the living proof of an amazing theory, that any ordinary child can be turned into a genius."

Three films exploring the very thing that makes us human. Each episode features an extraordinary character who can do extraordinary things with their brain:

Marc Yu is only 7 years old, but he already has a repertoire of over 15 classical piano pieces - some of them over 20 minutes long. Chess grand master Susan Polgar tells the story of how her father turned her and her sisters into chess prodigies. Autistic Savant George Widener stuns us with his superhuman calculating and memory skills. And prepare to be moved by Tommy McHugh - the Liverpool hardman who turned into an obsessive artist after surviving a stroke.

We find out how they do it.

Episode 1 - Born Genius

The secrets of the developing brain - featuring Marc Yu, a 7-year-old pianist, who some say will be the next household name in classical music.

Episode 2 - Make me a Genius

Is a genius born or made? 37-year-old chess sensation Susan Polgar thinks she knows the answer.

Episode 3 - Accidental Genius

When accidents in the brain reveal extraordinary skills - featuring George Widener, the human calculator, and Tommy McHugh, a labourer turned into an artist by a stroke. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.windfallfilms.com

"I do think pornography and the way it seeped into culture has had some effect because it's so saturated, it's so become a norm that people are seeing sex and their bodies through a completely distorted lens." -Rowan Peeling, Former Editor of the Erotic Review

My Penis And Everyone Else’s challenges society’s stereotypes of masculinity as well as getting to the heart of why men are so fixated with their members.

Emotional, revelatory, and intensely engaging, this film takes on one of society’s last taboos and culminates in one of the most daring exhibitions ever seen in the UK, as Lawrence puts together the world’s largest collection of penis portraiture ever seen! (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.mypenisandeveryoneelses.com

"It seems there is no real division between the mind and the body. Both work together as part of the human whole and changes in one influence the other. Nothing is all in the mind, or just physical. We seem to be extraordinary mixtures of mind and matter, able almost to use one to create the other. Each one of us certainly has the power and science now has given us the means to take personal responsibility for our own well-being. We can control our own pain, look after our own fitness, and take drug free action against infection."

Episode 1: Mind Over Body

Investigations into the power of mind over the body. Touches on many subjects including self healing (including cancer, heavy burns), hypnosis, kung fu, deep free diving, anesthetic free operations, mental exercise.

Episode 2: Vibrations

Investigation into natural vibrations and how we and animals perceive them, including pre earthquake tremors, dolphin interaction, and Sharie Edwards - who can produce sine waves with her voice!

Episode 3: Electrical Bodies

Electrical phenomenon of the body: auras, plant 'communication', energy healing, acupuncture, and animal acupuncture.

Episode 4: Extra sensory Mind

Investigates psychic abilities, near death experiences, out of body experiences, remote viewing (Operation Stargate), identical twin and close friend synchronicity phenomenon, 'stare effect' etc etc to see if theres anything behind the common claims that the mind is capable of more...

"It is somewhat presumptuous to disdain or condemn as fake that which does not appear likely." –Montaigne

This documentary film will be the testimony of a personal and subjective adventure. It will also show the dangers and risks involved in Shamanism: (1) losing yourself in the light or the darkness of your recently awakened emotions or (2) misinterpreting the feelings or visions. This could lead to schizophrenia in the event these journeys not be guided by competent Shamans or compliant with an unyielding discipline and strict diet.

The film will primarily show the therapeutic power of the Shamans and their plants. This power is a type of ancestral psychoanalysis or human psychotherapy backed by 4,000 years of experience and practice. The film will allow the Shamans to speak for themselves. It will show how their cultures and their belief systems culminate from their knowledge of the Invisible. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://otherworlds.jankounen.com

"We tend to accept that people in authority must be right. It's this assumption that Socrates wanted us to challenge by urging us to think logically about the nonsense they often come out with, rather than being struck dumb by their aura of importance and air of suave certainty."

This six part series on philosophy is presented by popular British philosopher Alain de Botton, featuring six thinkers who have influenced history, and their ideas about the pursuit of the happy life.

Episode 1: Socrates on Self-Confidence

Why do so many people go along with the crowd and fail to stand up for what they truly believe? Partly because they are too easily swayed by other people's opinions and partly because they don't know when to have confidence in their own.

Episode 2: Epicurus on Happiness

British philosopher Alain De Botton discusses the personal implications of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270BCE) who was no epicurean glutton or wanton consumerist, but an advocate of "friends, freedom and thought" as the path to happiness.

Episode 3: Seneca on Anger

Roman philosopher Lucious Annaeus Seneca (4BCE-65CE), the most famous and popular philosopher of his day, took the subject of anger seriously enough to dedicate a whole book to the subject. Seneca refused to see anger as an irrational outburst over which we have no control. Instead he saw it as a philosophical problem and amenable to treatment by philosophical argument. He thought anger arose from certain rationally held ideas about the world, and the problem with these ideas is that they are far too optimistic. Certain things are a predictable feature of life, and to get angry about them is to have unrealistic expectations.

Episode 4: Montaigne on Self-Esteem

Looks at the problem of self-esteem from the perspective of Michel de Montaigne (16th Century), the French philosopher who singled out three main reasons for feeling bad about oneself - sexual inadequecy, failure to live up to social norms, and intellectual inferiority - and then offered practical solutions for overcoming them.

Episode 5: Schopenhauer on Love

Alain De Botton surveys the 19th Century German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) who believed that love was the most important thing in life because of its powerful impulse towards 'the will-to-life'.

Episode 6: Nietzsche on Hardship

British philosopher Alain De Botton explores Friedrich Nietzsche's (1844-1900) dictum that any worthwhile achievements in life come from the experience of overcoming hardship. For him, any existence that is too comfortable is worthless, as are the twin refugees of drink or religion. (Excerpt from website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.alaindebotton.com

"Social situations significantly control individual behavior. For Lewin, human behavior is always a function of the individual and the social environment. This means that the best and worst of human nature can be brought out by manipulating some aspects of the social environment."

In the early 1970s, Craig Haney, Curt Banks, Carlo Prescott, and Philip Zimbardo conducted a landmark situational study at Stanford University. The experiment tested the fundamental attribution error: our tendency to attribute causes of behavior to personal factors, underestimating the influence of situational conditions.

For this study, a small group of college students volunteered to be subjects and were carefully tested for sound psychological and physical health. Half of the students were randomly selected to act as prisoners, the other half to act as guards. The study took place in a simulated jail facility in the Stanford University Psychology Department.

Once the study subjects entered the simulated jail, uniforms, rules, and other details distinguished the two groups from each other, and blurred the line between the reality of the study and life in prison. The students spent much of the day cramped in tiny cells, undergoing physical trials, and enduring the overall claustrophobic atmosphere of a small jail 24 hours a day. The guards, however, were allowed to return to their homes and normal surroundings after their shifts.

What happened during the study, originally planned to last two weeks, was more dramatic than anyone had anticipated, even the researchers themselves. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.learner.org

"There are many psychopaths in society, that actually, we virtually know nothing about. These are the psychopaths who don't necessarily commit homicide, commit serious violence, or even come to the attention of the police. They may be successful businessmen. They may be successful politicians. They may be successful academics. They may be successful priests. They exist in all areas of society. There is a growing awareness that psychopathic behavior is around us in all walks of life."

According to popular wisdom, psychopaths are crazed and bloodthirsty serial killers. The reality is not so simple. While many psychopaths do commit violent crimes, not all psychopaths are criminals and not all criminals are psychopathic. Psychopaths are found in many walks of life and are often successful in competitive professions. However they are also ruthless, manipulative and destructive. Equinox reports on techniques developed by psychologists to work out whether a person is psychopathic and shows how brain scientists are coming close to mapping the malfunctions in the brain that cause a person to be a psychopath. In Britain one person in 200 is likely to be a psychopath. However psychopaths are thought to be responsible for half of all reported crimes and to make up between 15% and 20% of the prison population.

The programme looks at the most recent research into the brains and behaviour of psychopaths and assesses the prospects for the treatment or containment of this antisocial group of people who create such a disproportionate amount of destruction. Psychopaths who have been convicted of appalling crimes explain with disturbing clarity what motivated them in their violent and destructive behaviour. They speak without shame, guilt, remorse or empathy with their victims. Though they are articulate and, at times, plausible and charming, they lack the range of emotions experienced by the rest of society. They know the difference between right and wrong but they do not feel it. Robert Hare, Professor of Psychology at the University of Vancouver, has devised a system of assessment called the Psychopathy Checklist. In specialised interviews, psychologists assess individuals on a scale of 0 to 40 for a series of character traits, including callousness, superficial charm, lack of empathy and many others (for more detail look at How to recognise a psychopath). Anyone whose score is greater than 26 is diagnosed as psychopathic. (Excerpt from video.google.com)

Please visit site for more information:
Must Read Book: Political Ponerology

"It's important not to think of this as prisoner and guard in a real prison. The important issue is the metaphor prisoner and guard. What does it mean to be a prisoner? What does it mean to be a guard? And the guard is somebody who limits the freedom of someone else, uses the power in their role to control and dominate someone else, and that's what this study is about."

In the summer of 1971, Philip Zimbardo, Craig Haney, and Curtis Banks carried out a psychological experiment to test a simple question. What happens when you put good people in an evil place-does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? To explore this question, college student volunteers were pretested and randomly assigned to play the role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison at Stanford University. Although the students were mentally healthy and knew they were taking part in an experiment, some guards soon because sadistic and the prisoners showed signs of acute stress and depression. After only six days, the planned two-week study spun out of control and had to be ended to prevent further abuse of the prisoners. This dramatic demonstration of the power of social situations is relevant to many institutional settings, such as the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. (Excerpt from DVD)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.prisonexp.org

"The Arab is a one-dimensional caricature, a cartoon cutout used by film makers as stock villains and as comic relief. And so, over and over, we see Arabs in movies portrayed as buffoons, their only purpose being to deliver cheap laughs." –Jack Shaheen

This groundbreaking documentary dissects a slanderous aspect of cinematic history that has run virtually unchallenged from the earliest days of silent film to today's biggest Hollywood blockbusters. Featuring acclaimed author Dr. Jack Shaheen, the film explores a long line of degrading images of Arabs--from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs and gun-wielding "terrorists"--along the way offering devastating insights into the origin of these stereotypic images, their development at key points in US history, and why they matter so much today. Shaheen shows how the persistence of these images over time has served to naturalize prejudicial attitudes toward Arabs and Arab culture, in the process reinforcing a narrow view of individual Arabs and the effects of specific US domestic and international policies on their lives. By inspiring critical thinking about the social, political, and basic human consequences of leaving these Hollywood caricatures unexamined, the film challenges viewers to recognize the urgent need for counter-narratives that do justice to the diversity and humanity of Arab people and the reality and richness of Arab history and culture. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.reelbadarabs.com

"All that we are is a result of what we have thought" -Buddha

The Secret, which is described as a self-help film, [2][3] uses a documentary format to present the "Law of Attraction." This law is the "secret" that, according to the tagline, "has traveled through centuries to reach you." The film features short dramatized experiences and interviews of a team of "personal transformation specialists", "spiritual messengers", "feng shui masters", and moneymaking "experts".[4] As put forth in the film, the "Law of Attraction" principle posits that people's feelings and thoughts attract real events in the world into their lives; from the workings of the cosmos to interactions among individuals in their physical, emotional, and professional affairs. The film also suggests that there has been a strong tendency by those in positions of power to keep this central principle hidden from the public. The previews or "clues" to the film, show men who "uncovered the Secret...". (Excerpt from Wikipedia)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.thesecret.tv

"[Y]ou can see a sudden change about five or six years ago when we started being increasingly bombarded with sexually suggestive messages and children depending on their age of course receive them as if they were normal. When you're dealing with children and teenagers in particular, they are at an age where they want to fit in with the norm. They want to resemble their idols. They want to be popular. That’s a key concept in adolescence. Well, now to be popular, you have to be hot. You have to give off sexual energy, but when you’re fourteen years old or even eleven, that’s easier said than done. So they start imitating, dressing the same way, and doing the same movements – like when they dance. There’s also the question of fashion. At the moment, fashion for kids is alarming on some levels because clothing has been eroticized, especially for little girls." –Francine Duquet, sexologist

Are children being pushed prematurely into adulthood? Sophie Bissonnette's documentary Sexy inc. Nos enfants sous influence analyzes the hypersexualization of our environment and its noxious effects on young people. Psychologists, teachers and school nurses criticize the unhealthy culture surrounding our children, where marketing and advertising are targeting younger and younger audiences and bombarding them with sexual and sexist images. These stereotypes treat girls of all ages as sexual objects, and exercise a damaging the effect on their identities. Because they see degrading images of sexuality on the Internet, some children confuse sexual relations with pornography. Sexy inc. suggests various ways of countering hypersexualization and the eroticization of childhood and invites us to rally against this worrying phenomenon. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://films.nfb.ca

"The fundamental nature of reality is actually consciousness."

Peter Russell explores the reasons why consciousness may be the fundamental essence of the Universe.

Many have made such claims from metaphysical perspectives, but the possibility has always been ignored by the scientific community. In this talk, he discusses the problems the materialist scientific worldview has with consciousness and proposes an alternative worldview which, rather than contradicting science, makes new sense of much of modern physics. He presents a reasoned argument that shows how they are pointing towards the one thing science has always avoided considering—the primary nature of consciousness. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.peterrussell.com

"Mel Riley belonged to one of the strangest chapters in the history of espionage. Strange because it involves that supposedly doesn't exist: the psychic ability known as extrasensory perception. Culture of western science has tended to treat such things as fantasy and folklore, but the culture of espionage - always on the lookout for new ways of gathering intelligence - has tended to be more open-minded."

Delving into US intelligence’s use of psychics for high level spying missions, The Real X-Files formed a pivotal part of Channel 4’s science-fiction weekend when aired in Britain. The film enters a cloak-and-dagger climate of paranoid psychic arms race, extra-sensory spying programmes and psychic power used as a legitimate government weapon.

For the first time, men and women at the heart of America’s psychic spying programme talk candidly about concerns with strange events and bizarre phenomena shared by the CIA, FBI, NASA, Secret Service and each of the armed forces. Giant ravens, shamanic monsters, mysterious spirit entities and enough government involvement to fuel conspiracy junkies’ theories for aeons.

"Spoon-bending sessions, we learned from The Real X-files, were a popular pastime in the higher reaches of American intelligence when reliance on psychic perception in espionage became slightly out of hand. An old army hand recalled that one agency was overrun with ‘civilian-type females’ (the witches) reading senior officers tarot cards and performing what were graphically described as ‘psychic blowjobs’." (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.walltowall.co.uk

"Because the data comes from a universal source derived by the unconscious, as unbelievable as this may sound, each member should contain similar descriptors and sketches providing the same answer. Each session is executed blind, which means the team members themselves do not even know what the cue or the question is."

When police investigations go cold, the Remote Viewing investigation unit, operated by retired military intelligence officer, Major Ed Dames is called in. Only accepting a few public operations a year, these cases have never previously been seen by public eyes as usually the presence of news and camera crews are restricted. This behind-the-scenes look into the world of professional Remote Viewing is truly an unprecedented peek into what really goes on behind closed doors.

The professional Remote Viewing team heads to Washington State to investigate the disappearance and probable homicide of Christina White, a 12-year-old that disappeared on April 28, 1979. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.learnrv.com

"The human brain is without any doubt the most complexly organized form of matter in the universe. The brain is made up of 100 billion nerve cells or neurons. Someone has calculated that the number of possible permutations and combinations of brain activity exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe."

Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran, an eloquent neuroscientist, is fascinated by patients who have unusual abilities or defects in the way they perceive the world. These include such puzzling phenomena as the phantom pain experienced in a missing, amputated limb, or the inability to recognize a familiar face following a stroke. From these strange cases, Ramachandran is building a novel vision of how the brain works. In "Secrets of the Mind," NOVA dramatizes the intimate stories of Ramachandran's encounters with his extraordinary patients. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.pbs.org

"Serious physicists are contemplating time travel, serious physicists are contemplating parallel universes, serious physicists are trying to understand the eleven dimensions of string theory, and when you get into those realms, you start to look to myth and sort of magical thinking and almost surreal thinking as a way to even talk about those things."

Secrets of the Occult explores the world of the occult from the ancient and modern magicians who practice it to the cutting edge scientists attempting to explain its mysterious claims. This program highlights the advances that have been achieved by innovators who challenged established reality like Newton, Galileo, Carl Jung and Einstein. The claims of the occult magicians are put under the microscope to reveal the fascinating interface between ancient Egyptian and Greek beliefs to modern discoveries of the mind and the physical world.

The Magicians & The Scientists Secrets of the Occult DVD Extras explores the fascinating interface between occult beliefs and modern discoveries of the mind and the physical world. Experts speak on a range of topics from the function of magic to the beginning of mysticism. Dreams and the Collective Unconscious, a 21st Century Perspective, and many more subjects related to the first magicians and modern scientists who unravel the mysteries of our world are included.

"4 million others in the UK have it and many of the seriously ill end up killing themselves. So I decided to speak out about my mental illness." –Stephen Fry

Comedian, actor, author and film-maker Stephen Fry meets celebrities and members of the public who talk frankly about the impact the condition has on their lives.

During the two programmes, Stephen Fry talks in detail about his own experience of having bipolar disorder. He recounts his suicide attempt after walking out of the West End play Cellmates in 1995, and the continuing severe mood swings he has to endure.

Stephen interviews other celebrities with bipolar, including Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher, Hollywood star Richard Dreyfus and British comedians Tony Slattery and Jo Brand.

He also meets ordinary people and their families coping with the condition and talks to them about some of the possible triggers. They all speak candidly about how bipolar disorder has affected their day-to-day lives.

At a recent seminar on bipolar disorder at St Andrew's University, Stephen was asked by an audience of psychiatric students and practitioners about his reasons for making the programme. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk

"Eating disorders affect an estimated five million people in the United States. As many as one in seven women with anorexia will die from the illness."

The HBO Documentary film Thin takes us inside the walls of Renfrew Center, a residential facility for the treatment of women with eating disorders, closely following four young women (ages 15 - 30) who have spent their lives starving themselves, often to the verge of death. The film deftly chronicles the pervasiveness of restrictive eating behaviors (most of the women profiled learned dysfunctional eating habits from their mothers while growing up), as well as the failure of our current health-insurance industry to address its clients' needs, while never shifting focus from the women themselves. Director Lauren Greenfield documents with astonishing depth the daily rituals, spontaneous friendships and startlingswings between recovery and relapse that make up life at the center. The result is a powerful new insight into one of our society's most insidious open secrets. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://store.hbo.com

"The question that really comes out of this is 'why are boys behaving in this way?' 'Why is 90% of violence committed by boys and men?' [I]t’s not just in these few places (like video games or movies) but it’s in what passes for normal culture. It is part of the normal training and conditioning and socializing of boys and men. That's a point that a lot of people don't want to hear, but if you look at the culture these kids are immersed in, violence is a normal, natural part, not just of the world, but of being masculine or being a male person in the world." –Jackson Katz

it’s not just in these few places (like video games or movies) but it’s in what passes for normal culture. It is part of the normal training and conditioning and socializing of boys and men. That's a point that a lot of people don't want to hear, but if you look at the culture these kids are immersed in, violence is a normal, natural part, not just of the world, but of being masculine or being a male person in the world.

In this innovative and wide-ranging analysis, Jackson Katz argues that widespread violence in American society, including the tragic school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, Jonesboro, Arkansas, and elsewhere, needs to be understood as part of an ongoing crisis in masculinity.

This exciting new media literacy tool-- utilizing racially diverse subject matter and examples-- will enlighten and provoke students (both males and females) to evaluate their own participation in the culture of contemporary masculinity. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.mediaed.org

"In real time, officials have explained and justified these military operations to the American people by withholding crucial information about the actual reasons and potential costs of military action again and again, choosing to present an easier version of war's reality; a steady and remarkably consistent storyline designed not to inform, but to generate and maintain support and enthusiasm for war."

War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations. (Excerpt from video.google.com)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.mediaed.org

"Have you ever stopped for a moment and looked at yourself through the eyes of the ultimate observer?"

Filmed in Portland, Oregon, What the Bleep Do We Know blends a fictional story line, documentary-style discussion, and computer animation to present a viewpoint of the physical universe and human life within it, with connections to neuroscience and quantum physics. Three directors are devotees of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment and JZ Knight/Ramtha.[7] Some ideas discussed in the film are:

• The universe is best seen as constructed from thought (or ideas) rather than from substance.
• What has long been considered "empty space" is anything but empty.
• Our beliefs about who we are and what is real are not simply observations, but rather form ourselves and our realities.
• Peptides manufactured in the brain can cause a bodily reaction to an emotion, resulting in a new perspective to old adages such as "think positively" and "be careful what you wish for."

In the narrative segments of the movie, Marlee Matlin portrays Amanda, a deaf photographer who acts as the viewer's avatar as she experiences her life from startlingly new and different perspectives.

In the documentary segments of the film, scientists in quantum physics, biology, medicine, psychiatry, and theology, along with spiritual commentators, discuss the roots and meaning of Amanda's experiences. The comments focus primarily on a single theme: We create our own reality. (Excerpt from Wikipedia)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.whatthebleep.com

"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism."

First in a three-part series of films produced by PBS, on the life and works of the great thinker and psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.

Part 1: A Life of Dreams

Part one provides an overview of the major contributions made by Jung in his long career. Born on July 26, 1875, in Switzerland, Jung became interested in psychiatry during his medical studies. He saw that the minds of mentally deranged persons had similar contents, much of which he recognized from his own interior life, described in his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections. His lifelong quest to understand the workings of the psyche led him to develop the analytical method of psychiatry. He proceeded by looking at the role in his patients' lives of what he termed the personal and collective unconscious, as expressed through dreams, myths, and outer events. With film clips, photographs, and interviews with some of his colleagues, as well as with Jung himself, the story of one of the most important figures of the 20th century is told.

Part 2: The Inheritance of Dreams

Inheritance of Dreams looks at the collective myths that are shared by different cultures and races throughout the world. Jung saw these as evidence of an underlying unifying principle in the human psyche, which he termed archetypes. These archetypes are present in the collective unconscious and express themselves to the individual in dreams and synchronistic events. The film surveys some of the archetypal symbolism in world myths. Jungian analyst John Beebe uses the science fiction film Star Wars to illustrate the presence of the ancient myths in today's symbolic expressions. There is rare footage of Jung's travels to Africa, England, and New Mexico, in search of archetypal motifs.

Part 3: A World of Dreams

This episode examines some interesting archetypal images expressed in modern imagery. The film takes the viewer through a diverse range of sources, from Alcoholics Anonymous and science fiction films, to modern architecture and the stock market. There are interviews with Jungian analysts including Aniela Jaffe, Jane Wheelwright, James Hillman, and Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig. Dr. Harry Wilmer shares his work with the dreams and "healing nightmares" of Vietnam veterans. New Age philosophy and Alfred Hitchcock's film Notorious are discussed as they relate to Jungian psychology. (Excerpt from website)

Please visit site for more information:
http://www.cgjungny.org

"Doctors have been transplanting livers, kidneys, and hearts for over forty years - but faces have always been different. They are seen as a sacred and untouchable part of our identity. Unlike other organs, face transplants are not life saving operations. As a result, ethical committees have always blocked them from going ahead."

In November 2005, 37 year old, mother of two, Isabelle Dinoire became the first person in the world to receive a new face. The decision made by French surgeons to perform the operation went against the findings of almost every other ethical committee in the world and has since sparked a fierce debate over the ethics of the operation.

With the long term effects still unknown, do the risks outweigh the benefits? Are face transplants really in the best interest of the patient? (Excerpt from website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.bbc.co.uk

"In our culture we've been trained for individual differences to stand out, so you look at each person and the immediate opinion is brighter, dumber, older, younger, richer, poorer, and we make all these dimensional distinctions; put em into categories and treat them that way. And we get so that we only see others as separate from ourselves and the ways in which they're separate, and one of the dramatic characteristics of experience is being with another person and suddenly seeing the ways in which they are like you, not different from you. And experiencing the fact that which is essence in you and essence in me is indeed one; the understanding there is no other - it is all one."

Zeitgeist was created as a non-profit filmiac expression to inspire people to start looking at the world from a more critical perspective and to understand that very often things are not what the population at large think they are. The information in Zeitgeist was established over a year long period of research and the current Source page on this site lists the basic sources used / referenced. Soon, an Interactive Transcript will be online with detailed footnotes and links so exact sources and further research can be relayed. (Excerpt from main website)

Please visit the official website for more information:
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com

"A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except faults, so he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions. By thought I mean the chattering inside the skull; perpetual and compulsive repetition of words, of calculations, and symbols going on inside the head. For as a result of confusing the real world of nature with mere signs, such as money, stocks and bonds, title deeds, and so forth. This is a disaster. Time to wake up. " –Alan Watts

Alan Watts (1915-1973) who held both a master's degree in theology and a doctorate of divinity, is best known as an interpreter of Zen Buddhism in particular, and Indian and Chinese philosophy in general. He authored more than 20 excellent books on the philosophy and psychology of religion, and lectured extensively, leaving behind a vast audio archive. With characteristic lucidity and humor Watts unravels the most obscure ontological and epistemological knots with the greatest of ease. (Excerpt from video.google.com)

Please visit site for more information:
http://www.alanwatts.com

"My secret is out now. Everybody in the world knows what I did. I was evil. I was evil because I had love for my animals more than most people do."

In 2005 a bizarre new story spread from the sleepy rural town of Enumclaw, WA -- a man died of internal injuries sustained while attempting a sexual act with a horse. It was discovered the man was part of a small group of zoophiliacs -- people who crave erotic contact with animals -- and that they had been engaging in various activities with local animals for some time. While investigating the incident, Washington police authorities discovered the state had no laws on the books concerning bestiality, and Sen. Pam Roach quickly introduced legislation which would make it illegal. While the story became a national news item after hitting the Internet, Seattle-based filmmaker Robinson Devor was curious about what sort of people became involved in the underground world of zoophilia, and Zoo is a docudrama which explores the horse sex case, the other members of the zoophile ring (two members of the group participated in the production of the film), the animal rescue organization that took possession of the horses, and the legislators and law enforcement officers who reacted to the case. Originally produced under the title In the Forest There Is Every Kind of Bird, Zoo was screened in competition at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. (Excerpt from website)