Summary: How do people get what they want? The most primal aim of economics is to find answers to that blunt but telling question-something at which Steven D. Levitt has proved particularly adept. In this ABC News program, Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, coauthors of the best-selling book Freakonomics, reason out points of convergence between beauty pageant contestants and crack dealers, abortion and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: While poverty has traditionally been a problem only for the unemployed, a new demographic of Americans has emerged-the working poor. This program explores the disturbing realities that many people in low-wage jobs face every day-such as having to decide whether to pay the rent, buy groceries, or see a doctor. Viewers will learn how standards of living are often measured, how suburban areas have...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: A 10-year high school reunion provides an chance to investigate opportunity cost, supply and demand's effect on wages, investing in human capital, and the costs and benefits of career decisions. In another segment, two workers, thinking hard about their futures, learn about incentives for investing in human capital and the economic risks involved, why people change jobs, and factors that...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: As recession enfolded Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, the economic axis shifted to the Islamic world, where the concept of risk management was born. This program, hosted by Peter Jay, explores the Muslim commercial empire in Egypt, the reemergence of trade in northwestern Europe with the waning of the Dark Ages, and the rise of banking and sophisticated accounting methods among the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Few 20th-century economists have had the impact of John Maynard Keynes-the brilliant author of the Keynesian revolution-and his break-the-mold assertion that economies can achieve equilibrium without full employment. This program from the BBC archives, through interviews with Keynes and those who knew him, traces his life and ideas. Quentin Bell, J. K. Galbraith, and Ninette de Valois discuss...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: The United States continues to be the wealthiest country in the world, yet one in eight Americans-approximately 37 million people-live below the poverty line. This program analytically and sympathetically discusses the effects and implications of poverty, examining factors such as illiteracy, insufficient job skills, substance abuse, and crime. The phenomenon of multigenerational poverty is...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: What better way to understand a financial disaster than to meet the kind of people who created it? This CNBC Original documentary investigates the origins of the global economic crisis through eyewitness accounts from mortgage brokers, investment bankers, naive home buyers, and equally naive investors-as well as former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who encouraged shifts away from...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: During the recent period of high employment and low inflation, the economic fortunes of the U.S. could hardly have been better. But as the rich got richer, the gap between rich and poor grew all the larger. Today's concerns over recession notwithstanding, has the gulf between the haves and the have-nots finally widened to the point of moral indefensibility? Have the nation's obligations to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: America enjoyed unprecedented growth in the 1990s, which firmly established the country as the world's leading economic power. Why? In this program, ABC News correspondent John Stossel reports on what special factors make the U.S. and Hong Kong, a tiny yet extremely dynamic geopolitical entity, so successful-and why similar success eludes India and other countries. Experts include Nobel...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: From “promises to pay” on ancient Babylonian tablets to the insolvency of present-day consumerist America, this program explains the origins of credit and debt and why credit networks are central to civilization. Historian Niall Ferguson examines financial transactions recorded in cuneiform; the transition from Roman numerals to Arabic symbols for greater speed and efficiency among medieval...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: To some, the term "globalization" means ruthless exploitation by corporations; to others, it means bringing economic development to all the peoples of the world. This program explains key principles at the core of global economics and takes a historical look at their effects, focusing on market liberalization and the failed "East Asian miracle"; privatization of basic resources in Bolivia and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: In this ABC News program, SuperFreakonomics authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner give the concept of cause and effect a whack on the head. In a whirlwind round of 20 questions, Levitt and Dubner make forays into the worlds of business, education, health care, environmental science, and psychology to shed light on how a doctor's necktie can harm patients, why emergency rooms should be...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: This program explores the systemic differences between the individualistic capitalism of America and Britain, and the communitarian capitalism of Japan and Germany. It shows how both Japan and Germany embrace more collaborative relations between labor and management, government and business, and even among businesses than the more laissez-faire American system. Both Japan and Germany invest...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This program explores the central values of Japan, Germany, and the U.S. and focuses on what drives each of these societies. America's hallmark is individualism, Japan's the preeminence of the group; in America, freedom and diversity are primary values; in Japan, conformity and a powerful sense of nationalism prevail. Germany stands between the two, asserting individualism but striving, more...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: As ancient trading broadened and became more complex, barter became inadequate. In this program, host Peter Jay; Andrew Meadows, curator of the British Museum; Exeter University's Richard Seaford; and archaeologist John Camp examine history's first surge of coinage, from the stamped nuggets of electrum used at Sardis to the dominance of the denarius throughout the far-flung Roman Empire. The...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program, hosted by Peter Jay, focuses on Europe's hunger for wealth as it relates to the exploitation of the New World and the First Industrial Revolution. Expert commentary on the Aztec civilization, Europe's bullion famine, England's cottage industries, and expanding markets in North America-combined with the prescient writings of Daniel DeFoe and Bernard de Mandeville-lay the groundwork...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Imagine the conversation if some of the world's greatest minds in the sciences and arts convened in one room. In this program, host Sarah Montague moderates a unique, interdisciplinary round table discussion among seven 2008 Nobel Laureates: biochemists Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien; physicist Makoto Kobayashi; virologists Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi; economist Paul Krugman;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Did the Soviet Union collapse under external pressure or its own weight? What enabled free market forces to assert themselves in China? Is socialism dead, or has it simply evolved? This program addresses these and other questions, focusing on the political, cultural, and economic factors behind the fall of the iron curtain regimes. Outlining the Cultural Revolution and its consequences, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program, scientists from various disciplines sit down together in one room-specifically, the king's library in the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden. Hosted by the BBC's Zeinab Badawi, ten 2009 Nobel Laureates take part in an inspiring roundtable discussion of 21st-century physics, chemistry, medicine, and other subjects. Viewers meet molecular biologists Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Are capitalism and democracy mutually exclusive? Benjamin Barber does not think so. In this program, Bill Moyers talks with Barber, the author of the best-selling Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy and University of Maryland's Gershon and Carol Kekst Professor of Civil Society. Their lively discussion explores the promise, as well as the peril, of the emerging new world...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: How did the American credit market become so entwined with—and dependent on—Chinese lending? This program examines the rise and potential decline of “Chimerica,” the financial marriage between two of the world’s biggest economic powers. Historian Niall Ferguson shows how the Chinese “savings glut” led to excessively easy American borrowing and prompted the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: During the Middle Ages, most of Europe's inhabitants were illiterate and lived in the shadow of the wealthy; knowledge of peasant culture is therefore limited. This program addresses the historical lack of firsthand written materials, viewing serfs and servants through the eyewitness accounts of a fictitious traveler. Although a peasant farmer's daily existence was indeed oppressive, defined by...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Filmed in a wide range of suburban and metropolitan areas around the United States, this program presents a dynamic and thought-provoking exploration of American suburbia, including its genesis and history, its dramatic political and social evolution, and its developmental challenges. Viewers are guided through specific issues facing the nation’s suburban landscape, including problems in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: At the end of the 19th century, socialism was an idyllic dream among intellectuals. Sixty years later it had become a reality for much of the world. This program describes the expansion of socialist and Communist rule into Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and western Europe-showing the weaknesses that developed in the practice of socialism even as it reached the apex of its popularity....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007