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Rod Serling, the creator of the US television series The Twilight Zone (1959-64) firmly believed in the connection between smart science fiction, imagination and progress. In this 1963 interview, newly and inventively animated for PBS’s Blank on Blank series, Serling discusses how scientific discoveries are driven by the same youthful impulse to bring the unreal to life as his own work, which creates ‘impossibilities’ through storytelling.
Producer: David Gerlach, Amy Drozdowska
Animator: Patrick Smith
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Animals and humans
Are zoos and natural history museums born of a desire to understand, or to control?
57 minutes
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Archaeology
What’s an ancient Greek brick doing in a Sumerian city? An archeological investigation
16 minutes
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Family life
The migrants missing in Mexico, and the mothers who won’t stop searching for them
21 minutes
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Ecology and environmental sciences
The tree frog die-off that sparked a global mystery – and revealed a dark truth
15 minutes
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Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes
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History
From Afghanistan to Virginia – the Muslims who fought in the American Civil War
22 minutes
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Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes
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Fairness and equality
Visit the small Texas community that lives in the shadow of SpaceX launches
14 minutes
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Film and visual culture
Our world has very different contours when a millimetre is blown up to a full screen
8 minutes