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2010-05-04

Want to watch something intelligent? Take a look at these three BBC documentary series by Adam Curtis, all of them explaining how the society we know today became like this through ways and mechanisms you probably didn't know. These are all very good and can be downloaded or streamed completely legally:



1) "The Century of the Self" (2002) focuses on how Sigmund Freud's family exerted a surprising amount of influence on the way corporations and governments throughout the 20th century have thought about, and dealt with, people. [Download] [Wikipedia]

2) "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" (2004) compares the rise of the American neo-conservative movement and the radical Islamist movement, and argues that the threat of radical Islamism is largely a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries. [Download] [Wikipedia]

3) "The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom" (2007) explores how a simplistic model from the cold war of human beings as self-seeking creatures led to today's idea of "freedom". [Download] [Wikipedia]

He has of course done more work, check out his Wikipedia entry. And then download/stream it through Archive.org.