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Tucked away on a remote island in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is ‘an insurance policy for world agriculture’. Cavernous and eerily stark on the inside, the vault contains hundreds of millions of frozen seed samples from across the globe. The US agriculturalist Cary Fowler, senior advisor to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, helps to oversee the project. He thinks that the vault could help humanity survive the incremental but very real challenges presented by climate change and other existential threats. Believing that ‘doomsday happens every day… in small bits and pieces’, Fowler views the long-term survival of our species as a problem that can be solved only by prudent thinking and ‘very quiet’ solutions.
Director: David Osit
Producer: Caleb Heller
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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
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Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
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Fairness and equality
There’s a dirty side to clean energy in the metal-rich mountains of South Africa
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Food and drink
The passage of time is a peculiar thing in a 24-hour diner
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Anthropology
For an Amazonian female shaman, ayahuasca ceremonies are a rite and a business
30 minutes
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Biology
‘Save the parasites’ may not be a popular rallying cry – but it could be a vital one
11 minutes