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When a giant blue whale washes up on a beach in California, people begin to flock from all over to take in the sight. As they pose for photos beside the enormous carcass, and question the creature’s origins, the filmmaker Tijana Petrović watches them watching. Her short documentary Back to Land meditates on our fascination with the spectacle of nature, and observes the limitations of human knowledge against the breadth of our curiosity.
Director: Tijana Petrović
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Biology
The key to geckos’ unrivalled climbing skills isn’t sticky feet. It’s subatomic
4 minutes
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Technology and the self
Greetings from Green Bank – the small town where modern technology is banned
10 minutes
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Stories and literature
What makes John Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ so enduringly powerful?
10 minutes
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Human evolution
Far from frivolous, cuteness is a powerful – and still mysterious – force of nature
6 minutes
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Dance and theatre
How a Noh mask-maker summons a lifelike face from a single block of wood
16 minutes
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The ancient world
What wine vessels reveal about politics and luxury in ancient Athens and Persia
16 minutes
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Art
David Goldblatt captured the contradictions of apartheid in stark black and white
15 minutes
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Philosophy of mind
Do we have good reasons to believe in beliefs? A radical philosophy of mind says no
5 minutes
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Space exploration
In the search for life, might alien ocean worlds be a better bet than Earth-like planets?
5 minutes