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Sitting atop four large tectonic plates, Japan is a hotbed of seismic activity, with some 1,500 earthquakes striking the country each year. While many pass without major incident, some prove disastrous, such as the 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tōhoku, which triggered a catastrophic tsunami and left more than 15,000 people dead. That death toll could look relatively small, however, if the massive earthquake that experts say has a 70 per cent chance of striking Tokyo in the next 30 years ever comes to pass. In The Earth is Humming, the US director Garrett Bradley examines how the ubiquity of earthquakes, and the disquieting threat that they pose, shape Japan’s national psyche. Laced with dark humour, Bradley’s short documentary visits seismologists, disaster prevention centres and survival supply shops, exploring what happens when a culture known for orderliness is faced with a persistent risk that can be mitigated, but never eliminated.
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Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
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Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
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Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
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Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
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History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
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Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
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Stories and literature
Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling
14 minutes
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Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes