Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Just as the groundwork for the internet was laid decades before its widespread use, many scientists believe the technologies that will usher in the era of human customisation and augmentation are being developed in labs today. Moving far beyond the prevention of genetic illness and advanced prosthetics for those who need them, these rapidly emerging technologies could – to borrow a phrase from Daft Punk – make it possible for anyone (with deep pockets) to be harder, better, faster, stronger. This delightful animation imagines the more bizarre enhancements future humans might desire, and hears the US engineer and ethicist Braden Allenby and biomedical engineer Conor Walsh consider how a coming wave of automation, robotics and biomedical enhancements could fundamentally alter the trajectory of our species – and even reframe what it means to be human.
Direction and Animation: Moth Studio
Website: Massive
video
Animals and humans
Are zoos and natural history museums born of a desire to understand, or to control?
57 minutes
video
Archaeology
What’s an ancient Greek brick doing in a Sumerian city? An archeological investigation
16 minutes
video
Family life
The migrants missing in Mexico, and the mothers who won’t stop searching for them
21 minutes
video
Virtues and vices
Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity
5 minutes
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
The tree frog die-off that sparked a global mystery – and revealed a dark truth
15 minutes
video
Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes
video
History
From Afghanistan to Virginia – the Muslims who fought in the American Civil War
22 minutes
video
Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes
video
Fairness and equality
Visit the small Texas community that lives in the shadow of SpaceX launches
14 minutes