new math

A short Great Big Story piece about Hagoromo, a Japanese chalk brand so prized that mathematicians stockpiled it, with some reportedly dealing it on the side. It tells the quirky tale of a writing tool whose supply became scarce.

A one-hour 2019 KOMO News documentary hosted by Eric Johnson on Seattle's homelessness and drug crisis, with interviews and looks at proposed solutions including a drug court program in Rhode Island. It argues addiction and mental illness are at the core of the problem.

A New Yorker short documentary about the 2014 sinking of the Sewol ferry in South Korea, based on the film In the Absence. It examines the failures in the rescue and the political aftermath.

Insider Food visits the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib temple in New Delhi, which feeds tens of thousands of people free daily and over 100,000 on holidays. It shows the machines and big-batch cooking that make this possible.

A KOMO News documentary about Seattle's homelessness, addiction and street crime. It examines the City Council's policies, shows conditions on the streets and the impact on local businesses, and explores possible solutions.

A New York Times Op-Doc by Laura Poitras profiling William Binney, a 32-year NSA veteran who helped design a secret program he says collects Americans' personal data.

Fully Charged's first of three reports from the Orkney Islands, covering the Surf 'n' Turf project that uses surplus wind and tidal power for hydrogen and electric vehicles.

Fully Charged host Robert Llewellyn visits Orkney, where wind, tidal, wave and solar generation plus community energy schemes power the islands. It presents the archipelago as a model for future energy systems.

VICE News reporter Isobel Yeung goes undercover as a tourist in Xinjiang, documenting heavy surveillance, policing and internment of Uighurs. It also covers children taken into state-run institutions.

ReasonTV tells the story of Bob Tillman, who spent nearly five years and $1.4 million trying to convert his San Francisco laundromat into apartments. It walks through the permitting, appeals and neighborhood opposition he faced.

Mentour Pilot's 56-minute account of the MH370 disappearance and what is now known, including the WSPR radio tracking technique and other sensing methods. It was made ahead of renewed search efforts.

Kirsten Dirksen tours new Earthships, homes built from tires, bottles and cans that generate their own energy, collect water and grow food. The video covers the newer, cheaper Encounter model and its passive systems.

Brian Springer's documentary Spin, built entirely from unauthorized satellite feeds of politicians and newscasters before they went on air during the 1992 US presidential election. It exposes the behind-the-scenes construction of media reality.

The ADVChina hosts tour a villa neighborhood in southern China that was built only three years earlier and is already empty and deteriorating. They use it to discuss ghost cities, building quality and the real estate bubble.

Planet of the Humans, a full documentary by Jeff Gibbs presented by Michael Moore, arguing that the green movement has been co-opted by corporate and wealthy interests and that techno-fixes are not enough.

A documentary on the last day the New York Times was printed with linotype machines in 1978, following the process from the newsroom to the press. It marks the move to computerized typesetting.

Fools & Dreamers is a 30-minute documentary about Hinewai Nature Reserve in New Zealand, where botanist Hugh Wilson let gorse grow as a nurse canopy to regenerate native forest. It shows the results after 30 years and the local skepticism he faced.

The trailer for Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old, a WWI documentary built from restored, colorized archival footage and BBC interviews with British soldiers.

A 1973 NBC News documentary on the US nerve gas arsenal, covering leaks in Okinawa, a Utah test that killed thousands of sheep, and the long-term hazards of storage sites. It won an Emmy.

Part 3 of WIRED's Future Cities series on Shenzhen. It examines how attitudes toward patents and intellectual property differ from the West, and how shanzhai (copycat) manufacturing created an ecosystem of rapid iteration and distribution.

Veritasium tells the story of the XZ backdoor, how a patient attacker became maintainer and nearly compromised SSH on Linux systems. It also covers free software history and how encryption in SSH works.

A New York Times Opinion documentary tracing Soviet and KGB disinformation, from the 1980s AIDS origin hoax to modern campaigns like Pizzagate. It features former KGB officers and the people who tried to counter the lies.

A CBS News (60 Minutes) profile of free solo climber Alex Honnold, who scales sheer rock faces without ropes. Lara Logan reports on his climbing and his apparent lack of fear, including his Half Dome ascent.

VICE News reporter Elle Reeve investigates China's rollout of facial recognition and mass surveillance technology and what it means for citizens. The report originally aired on VICE on HBO.

A 1940 Bell Telephone educational short teaching customers how to use their new dial phones and why the change was happening. It is a period piece about rolling out a new technology to ordinary people.

CBC Marketplace investigates locksmith scams in the Greater Toronto Area. It exposes networks of fake Google Maps listings and fake reviews, and uses hidden cameras to show how low quotes turn into overcharges.

A VICE on HBO segment in which Thomas Morton joins a tour of born-again Christians in the Holy Land. It examines the end-times beliefs behind evangelical support for Israel.

A documentary on North Korean defectors in Seoul and the South Korean intelligence service (NIS, formerly KCIA), including accusations of shady dealings.

A 1953 US Navy training film explaining the basic mechanisms in mechanical fire control computers aboard ships. It shows how gears, differentials and cams solved mathematical problems in permanent mechanical form.

The first episode of James Burke's 1978 BBC series Connections traces modern dependence on complex technological networks, starting with the 1965 New York blackout, and moves through ancient agriculture to Kuwait's oil-driven leap.

Dan Olson's long Folding Ideas video on the GameStop meme stock phenomenon, its online community and the conspiracy thinking around it. It runs over two hours.

The first part of a long two-part video series by historian Sean Munger arguing, with citations, that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy and acted alone. It goes through the provable historical facts and addresses conspiracy theories.

A 2017 documentary filmed at the Santa Fe Institute in which novelist Cormac McCarthy talks with SFI's David Krakauer. They discuss isolation, mathematics, character and the nature of the unconscious.

A short film by Max Joseph about his anxiety in bookstores and how to read more books amid constant streaming, social media and news. He looks for ways to rebalance his content diet in favor of reading.

A BBC documentary on Francis Bacon, the loud, hard-drinking British painter, drawing on people who knew him. It explores the haunted man behind the Roaring Boy persona.

A 1973 AT&T training film made for new employees at Bell Labs' Holmdel Computing Center, when Unix was in its third version and running at 16 computer centers in the Bell System. It shows how users submitted jobs and used the center's machines.

A Financial Times film examining how Brexit hurt the UK economy, with FT writers and business people. It looks at trade effects, political silence about the costs, and the absence of a convincing Brexit dividend.

An independent feature documentary in which 23 economists, advisers and financiers discuss how the financial system works and what a more just economic model might look like. It covers money creation, debt and the aftermath of the financial crisis.

A VPRO documentary on quantitative analysts who designed the mathematical models and high-speed trading systems behind modern finance. It features figures such as Paul Wilmott and asks what risks come from treating markets as a machine.

Two Australian YouTubers travel to North Korea and get a haircut while examining how Western media sensationalizes stories about the country.