In a world where witches, vampires and daemons live discreetly among humans, Diana Bishop is the last in one long line of distinguished witches. Unwilling to embrace her heritage she has immersed herself in her career as a historian. Her particular interest is alchemy and she visits Oxford to research some of Elias Ashmole's papers. She requests Ashmole 782 and as soon as she receives it she knows there is something uncanny about it; when she opens it she is shocked. She learns that 782 has been presumed lost for a very long time and that each species of Creature desires it. She is besieged and threatened and knows that, to protect herself, she must uncover all the mysteries of 782. She encounters the enigmatic vampire, Matthew Clairmont, who offers to help her; their mutual attraction is immediate, undeniable and inexplicable because they both know that witches and vampires are not supposed to trust each other. Diana makes her choice and accepts Matthew's help. This precipitates them into conflict with the Creature world.

Naomi Klein gives a lecture tracing the confluence of ideas about modifying behavior using shock therapy and other sensory deprivation and modifying national economics using the "shock treatment" of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School. She moves chronologically: Pinochet's Chile, Argentina and its junta, Yeltsin's Russia, Bush and Bremer's Iraq. A trumped-up villain provides distraction or rationalization: Marxism, the Falklands, nuclear weapons, terrorists; and, always, there is a great shift of money and power from the many to the few. News footage, a narrator, and talking heads back up Klein's analysis. She concludes on a note of hope.

2010 documentary film Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross

Set entirely inside Folsom Prison, this acclaimed fly-on-the-wall documentary follows three men during four days of intensive group therapy with convicts, revealing an intimate and powerful portrait of authentic human transformation that transcends what we think of as rehabilitation.

Nearly 100 years after its creation, the power of the U.S. Federal Reserve has never been greater. Markets and governments around the world hold their breath in anticipation of the Fed Chairman's every word. Yet the average person knows very little about the most powerful - and least understood - financial institution on earth. Narrated by Liev Schreiber, Money For Nothing is the first film to take viewers inside the Fed and reveal the impact of Fed policies - past, present, and future - on our lives. Join current and former Fed officials as they debate the critics, and each other, about the decisions that helped lead the global financial system to the brink of collapse in 2008. And why we might be headed there again.

In this conspiratorial Sci-Fi thriller set some time after WWII and loosely based on the US government's real life Project Blue Book, Captain Michael Quinn and Dr. Allen Hynek are tasked by the US Air Force to investigate reports of UFOs and debunk them, or at least come up with rational explanations for them. While Quinn, a smooth and tough military type, doesn't care about anything other than doing the job he was given, at first, the more skeptical Hynek quickly becomes convinced that some kind of deadly conspiracy is afoot. Meanwhile, as Cold War paranoia spreads among the population, a charismatic blonde with an agenda of her own befriends Hynek's lonely wife.

An award-winning film that has been called "A Must Watch" by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus and Director of The Hunger Games, Gary Ross. Living on One Dollar follows the journey of four friends as they set out to live on just $1 a day for two months in rural Guatemala. They battle hunger, parasites, and extreme financial stress as they attempt to survive life on the edge. An unimaginable reality for most young Americans, the challenges they face are real and plague over 1.1 billion people around the world. While the friends quickly learn there are no easy answers, the generosity and strength of Rosa, a 20 year old woman, and Chino, a 12 year old boy, give them resilient hope that there are effective ways to make a difference.

2013 documentary film directed by Chris Temple, Zach Ingrasci and Sean Leonard

Yellowstone follows the Dutton family, led by John Dutton, who controls the largest contiguous ranch in the United States, under constant attack by those it borders - land developers, an Indian reservation, and America's first National Park. It is an intense study of a violent world far from media scrutiny - where land grabs make developers billions, and politicians are bought and sold by the world's largest oil and lumber corporations. Where drinking water poisoned by fracking wells and unsolved murders are not news: they are a consequence of living in the new frontier. It is the best and worst of America seen through the eyes of a family that represents both.

The shy, lonely and outcast teenager Andrew Detmer is bullied and has no friends at high-school and lives with his abusive and alcoholic father Richard Detmer and his terminally ill mother Karen. Andrew buys a camera to film his everyday life. His cousin Matt Garetty drives him to school and invites Andrew to go to a party at night. Nearby they find a tunnel and suddenly acquire telekinetic abilities and Andrew becomes the most powerful. But he easily loses his temper and becomes dangerous while Matt tries to control him. When his mother needs a medicine and Andrew does not have enough money to buy it, his darker side overwhelms him and he becomes a menace.

Earth's future has been riddled by disasters, famines, and droughts. There is only one way to ensure mankind's survival: Interstellar travel. A newly discovered wormhole in the far reaches of our solar system allows a team of astronauts to go where no man has gone before, a planet that may have the right environment to sustain human life.

Awakening in an elevator, remembering nothing of his past, Thomas emerges into a world of about thirty teenage boys, all without past memories, who have learned to survive under their own set of rules in a completely enclosed environment, subsisting on their own agriculture and supplies. With a new boy arriving every thirty days, the group has been in "The Glade" for three years, trying to find a way to escape through the Maze that surrounds their living space (patrolled by cyborg monsters named 'Grievers'). They have begun to give up hope when a comatose girl arrives with a strange note, and their world begins to change with the boys dividing into two factions: those willing to risk their lives to escape and those wanting to hang onto what they've got and survive.

It is based on the real life story of legendary cryptanalyst Alan Turing. The film portrays the nail-biting race against time by Turing and his brilliant team of code-breakers at Britain's top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, during the darkest days of World War II.

Tells the story of a psychopathic killer who drives a stolen Mercedes into a crowd and a recently retired detective who tries to bring him down.

2017 American crime drama television series

Amidst scandal, intrigue and immense conflict, Russian Czarina Catherine the Great (Dame Helen Mirren) develops a unique and devoted relationship with Grigory Potemkin (Jason Clarke) as they overcome their adversaries and serve as the architects of modern-day Russia.

2019 TV miniseries based on Empress Catherine of Russia

Anthology series set in room 104 of a seemingly average American motel, telling each time a different story of the assorted guests who pass through, which can range from funny and fantastical to dramatic and horrifying.

Journalist Ozzie Graham is skeptical when he investigates a support group for oddballs who think they have been abducted by aliens -- yet the more he learns, the more confused, intrigued, and seduced he becomes.

movie

tv show

Laura Boyce

Shows and films that make you think or not think about the world

Australian/American television science fiction series

yes!

2010 television miniseries directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan

2013- 2017 TV series starring Adelaide Kane

Hmm

More lists by Laura Boyce

yes!

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