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Can you look inside the living brain and tell what someone is feeling? For the first time in history we have fMRI – a technology that promises to show the neurochemical traces of joy, rage, love and hate, as they cascade through the brain. Filmmaker Brent Hoff enlisted the Stanford Center for Cognitive Neurobiological Imaging to hold the world’s first ever ‘love competition’. Seven contestants had five minutes in an fMRI machine to love someone ‘as hard as they can’. The idea that love can be measured may seem deeply unromantic: the results were anything but.
Director: Brent Hoff
Producer: Malcolm Pullinger
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Rituals and celebrations
A beginner’s guide to a joyful Persian tradition of spring renewal and rebirth
3 minutes
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Love and friendship
Love looks a bit different for a chain-smoking couple in a small apartment
11 minutes
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Work
A Swedish expat in the Philippines wonders: what’s up with people sleeping at work?
14 minutes
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Biography and memoir
The unique life philosophy of Abdi, born in Somalia, living in the Netherlands
29 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
What’s this buzz about bees having culture? Inside a groundbreaking experiment
8 minutes
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Earth science and climate
The only man permitted in Bhutan’s sacred mountains chronicles humanity’s impact
22 minutes
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The ancient world
An ancient Roman’s hilarious (and perhaps relatable) response to a social snub
2 minutes
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Love and friendship
After his son’s terrorist attack, Azdyne seeks healing – and his granddaughter
25 minutes
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Art
More than breathtaking, ‘The Birth of Venus’ signalled an aesthetic revolution
19 minutes