limits of knowledge

A documentary on the 1972 Club of Rome study Limits to Growth, which questioned the pursuit of endless economic growth. It covers the study's findings and whether anyone acted on them.

The Eames Office's 1977 film Powers of Ten starts at a picnic in Chicago and zooms out by a factor of ten every ten seconds to the edge of the universe. It then zooms inward to a proton in a carbon atom.

A feature-length documentary on how the City of London and Britain's overseas territories built a global web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions after the empire declined. It traces how this network captured and hid wealth from around the world.

A VICE documentary profiling Wim Hof, the Iceman, covering his feats of cold endurance, his breathing and meditation method, and scientific studies of his control over his autonomic and immune systems.

A 29-minute cinematic timelapse by melodysheep that journeys trillions of years into the future, covering the death of the sun, the end of stars, proton decay, black hole evaporation and the fate of the cosmos.

The first part of Adam Curtis' documentary series on Sigmund Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays, who invented public relations. It shows how Bernays used Freud's ideas to link mass-produced goods to unconscious desires and create modern consumer persuasion.

In an Ars Technica War Stories episode, Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner describes how he made the game on the Apple II, fighting hardware memory limits and the platform's decline. It covers the rotoscoped animation and the engineering tricks involved.

A long documentary-style video arguing that slavery in the US effectively continued through convict leasing and the prison system until around 1942. It covers the constitutional carveout and the history of neoslavery.

NativLang's 47-minute animated documentary traces the birth and evolution of writing, from early cave marks to modern scripts. It presents the history of the world's writing systems as a story.

Captain Disillusion's VFXcool episode, led by Alan Melikdjanian, takes a 41-minute nostalgic look at how the visual effects of Flight of the Navigator were made. It covers early computers, motion control, in-camera effects and practical crafts.

Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison visits the chinampas, the floating gardens of Xochimilco in Mexico City. He looks at this ancient Aztec agricultural system and the project restoring it.

Tim Hunkin's 1987 TV series episode on how vacuum cleaners and related household machines work, remastered and upscaled in 2021. It is part of the six-episode 'Secret Life of Machines' series with hands-on demonstrations of everyday technology.

Tantacrul walks through how the MuseScore 4 team was built and how design decisions were made for the overhaul of a huge legacy notation app. It covers playback and engraving quality improvements.

Geoff Lawton documents a permaculture project that turned barren Jordanian desert into green, productive land. It covers the techniques he used.

Neil Halloran's animated, data-driven documentary visualizes the human cost of World War II and compares it with other wars and the trend toward fewer war deaths in recent decades.

Michael Oswald's documentary, based on Richard Werner's book, argues that Japan's 1990s crash was engineered by the central bank and powerful interests. It focuses on the Bank of Japan's hidden influence over the economy.

Part one of a 1996 BBC Modern Times documentary on the training to become a London black cab driver. It follows candidates learning the Knowledge and facing stressful repeated exams with Public Carriage Office examiners.

An episode of Tim Hunkin's The Secret Life of Machines that explains how a washing machine works, using models, cut-aways and animations. It was first aired in 1988.

A 1984 AT&T film showing the live cutover of a Glendale, California central office from step-by-step switching to an electronic switching system. Installers prepare the site and then cut cables in a coordinated operation.

An animated short on limits to growth, covering oil formation, peak oil, energy, economic growth and resource depletion. Its central section deals with exponential growth, and the author notes some statistics are dated.

A short BBC Planet Earth clip from the Pole to Pole episode showing the courtship displays of birds of paradise.

A VPRO documentary in which Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff explains her book on surveillance capitalism. It covers how Google and Facebook turn personal data into raw material for prediction and behavioral influence.

Coffeezilla's investigation into the Counter-Strike 2 skin gambling ecosystem, covering casino sites, influencers and esports teams that profit from it. It is part of a multi-part series on Valve's skin economy and its effects on young players.

The official trailer for the documentary General Magic, about the secretive Apple spinoff that tried to build a handheld communicator in 1990 and whose ideas shaped the smartphone era.

A two-hour episode of Fall of Civilizations on the Nabataeans, from humble desert traders to masters of Petra, and what finally brought down their empire.

Episode 4 of James Burke's Connections series, tracing how commercialism, climate change and the Black Death shaped the move to the Renaissance. It follows threads through waterpower, the printing press, the Jacquard loom and the Hollerith punch card toward modern computing.

Part one of Montemayor's animated-map documentary on the Battle of Midway, told using only the information available to the Japanese side. It focuses on Nagumo's dilemma.

A Dartmouth-produced documentary on how professors John Kemeny and Tom Kurtz, with a group of undergraduates, invented the BASIC language. It covers the creation of BASIC and the early time-sharing environment at Dartmouth.

Machine Thinking argues the 1751 machine, a metal-cutting lathe associated with Vaucanson, triggered the biggest explosion of wealth in history by enabling precise manufacturing of other machines.

Revolution OS is a feature-length documentary on the history of free software and Linux. It covers Stallman and the GNU project, Torvalds and the kernel, and Raymond and Perens on open source, starting from the era of freely shared hobbyist code.

Gaming Historian recounts how Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris in the Soviet Union and how a fight over publishing rights spanned the West, Mirrorsoft, Nintendo and the Cold War. It runs about an hour with chaptered parts.

First part of a four-part video history of Japan's electronics industry, covering the birth of the transistor and the rise of Japanese semiconductors. It appears to draw on NHK documentary material.

A five-hour documentary history of the Super Mario 64 A button challenge, which aims to beat the game with as few A presses as possible. It covers the bugs and exploits discovered over the years.

A two-minute clip from the documentary The Fog of War in which Robert McNamara recalls Fidel Castro explaining how close the world came to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

A 52-minute short version of the documentary The End of Suburbia, about peak oil and the end of cheap energy. It argues that American suburbs depend on cheap oil and may become the slums of the future.

A NOVA documentary with neuroscientist Heather Berlin exploring the subconscious and what drives our decisions. It uses sleepwalking, anesthesia, improvised rap in an MRI and game theory to probe how much of the brain's work is hidden.

Official trailer for the documentary Into Eternity, about Finland's Onkalo repository, built to store high-level nuclear waste safely for 100,000 years. It raises how to warn and communicate with far-future humans.

Coffeezilla recounts being offered a $20k bounty to expose a Counter-Strike skin casino, then investigates and finds a different story. It is the first episode of a series on CS skin gambling.

Internet Historian tells the story of No Man's Sky, from its over-hyped and badly received launch to years of updates by Hello Games that redeemed the game. It is a long, comedic mini-documentary.

A WIRED Future Cities documentary on Shenzhen, covering its hardware-prototyping culture and shanzhai copycat manufacturing. It looks at how the city's ecosystem evolved and what the rest of the world can learn.