So many of our brains are in chains, and we cannot think beyond that which has been propagandized with us in mind. Many of the things that target us are not for our benefit, but rather are intended to provide economic gain for those who scheme to dupe us with the ultimate mind screw. Blacks [...]

Summary There has been a “drug culture” since the dawn of civilization. Sumerian cuneiform tablets from 3000 BC show a poppy harvest, as do ancient Egyptian scripts and Greek statues adorned with poppy crowns. Far more recently, Freud sung the praises of cocaine, which was included in the original recipe for Coca-Cola. But since the [...]

Summary “It’s impossible not to remember the bombshell Forum press conference that autumn Thursday, and, like the JFK assassination or Challenger explosion, where we were when we heard it. “The Announcement” shows what happened behind the scenes: how Johnson learned of his illness, the anxiety over telling family and teammates and the fallout that occurred [...]

Summary Whilst Ron Jones’ The Third Wave has received a lot of attention and been dramatised, George Muldoon’s experiments in capitalist democracy involving two groups of seventh graders in Mill Valley, California have seemingly slipped under the political radar… “I said years and years and years ago that the public school system is like a [...]

Summary On a trip to visit family in Seoul in April, I was approached by a man and a woman who claimed to be North Korean defectors. They presented me with a DVD that recently came into their possession and asked me to translate it. They also asked me to post the completed film on [...]

Summary Released in 1968, “Black on Black” has been hailed for its pioneering effort to capture the voices and experiences of black America during one of the most volatile times in the nation’s history. Black on Black won six major awards, including the Edward R. Murrow Award for “distinguished television reporting and best documentary”; the [...]

The Aurora, Colorado theater massacre has reignited the debate about gun control in the country. There are many people who believe that gun control would have prevented such an occurrence. We live in a society where people blame access to guns for the violent acts that people who use them commit. We came across the [...]

Summary But the truth is, it’s a system in crisis, and the reason it’s a system in crisis is it’s a linear system and we live on a finite planet, and you cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely. From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our [...]

Summary Jacques Ellul was a French theologian/sociologist and anarchist. He first became well-known to American readers when his book The Technological Society was published in English in 1964. This book leveled a broad critique of technique, a term that means more than gadgets and machines – as the English word technology means. For Ellul, technique [...]

Summary Political philosopher and visionary, husband and father, dynamic orator and militant minister. In his lifetime, Malcolm X was many men. Born Malcolm Little, he later became “Detroit Red” and “New York Red” — a hustler, drug pusher, pimp, con man and the head of a Boston robbery ring. After spending time in prison, he [...]

Summary Is there more than one universe? In this visually rich, action-packed TED talk, Brian Greene shows how the unanswered questions of physics (starting with a big one: What caused the Big Bang?) have led to the theory that our own universe is just one of many in the “multiverse.” At the heart of modern [...]

Summary The Green Apple. David Owen, a writer for The New Yorker, discusses the complex issues of sustainability as they relate to urban and suburban life. Green Manhattan, an article that Owen wrote for The New Yorker about the city’s inherent sustainability, was a major inspiration for the e² series. Green for All. Learn more [...]

Summary “I am dying. … There is no sense in trying to deny that fact,” 59-year-old Craig Ewert says of his rapid deterioration just months after being diagnosed with ALS, a motor neuron disorder often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease. “I’m not tired of living,” explains Ewert, a retired computer science professor. “I’m tired [...]

Summary Marijuana: A Second Class Addiction (MASCA) sets out to investigate the popular misconception that marijuana is a non-addictive, non habit forming substance. Despite the fact that it is illegal, the ever-growing debate over whether marijuana should be legalized always tends to graze over one of the very fundamental questions of such a proposal – [...]

Summary In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today’s most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas. Peter Singer’s thoughts on the ethics of consumption are amplified against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue’s posh boutiques. Slavoj Zizek questions current [...]

Summary The Canadian documentary Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media presents a lengthy, detailed look at the political beliefs of celebrated intellectual Noam Chomsky. Casting only passing glances at Chomsky’s groundbreaking work in the field of linguistics and his eventful life, filmmakers Mark Achbar and Peter Witonick instead focus on his activities as a [...]

Summary In late 2001, around 8,000 Taliban fighters, including Chechens, Pakistanis and Uzbeks as well as suspected members of al-Qaeda, surrendered to the forces of Northern Alliance General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a U.S. ally in the war in Afghanistan, after the siege of Kunduz. The program recounts that several hundred of the prisoners, among them [...]

Summary In October 1969 hundreds of young people, clad in football helmets and wielding lead pipes, marched through an upscale Chicago shopping district, pummeling parked cars and smashing shop windows in their path. This was the first demonstration of the Weather Underground’s “Days of Rage.” Outraged by the Vietnam War and racism in America, the [...]

Summary Have US counter-terrorism policies contributed to the deadly crisis in the Horn of Africa? The worst drought in 60 years has thrown some 13 million people across the Horn of Africa into crisis. In Somalia, ravaged by two decades of conflict, the consequences have been disastrous. For over six months, aid agencies on the [...]

Summary Sudan was the giant of Africa which once represented the greatest hope for peaceful coexistence between Arab and African, Muslim and Christian. That hope is all but gone. As Sudan is split into two, the government of Omar al-Bashir in the North faces growing public resentment over the loss of national pride. To boost [...]

Summary Through a secret program called the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), there was a concerted effort to subvert the will of the people to avoid the rise “of a black Messiah” that would mobilize the African-American community into a meaningful political force. This documentary establishes historical perspective on the measures initiated by J. Edgar Hoover [...]

The KONY 2012 video has taken the Internet by storm, with over 50 million YouTube views as of today. Since its release, just about everyone, including celebrities, has tweeted or shared the 30-minute video on Twitter or Facebook. In the video, the director Jason Russell calls for the “arrest” of Lord’s Resistance Army leader, Joseph [...]

Summary War on Our World from Dominoes Falling Productions, is a feature length documentary using a collaboration of various material. The film examines war, imperialism and some of the causes and consequences of this, with a particular look at the Military-Industrial complex. An aim of the film is to help inspire peace. The film starts [...]

Summary Money is just information, a way we measure what we trade, nothing of value in itself. And we can make it ourselves, to work as a complement to conventional money. It’s just a matter of design. Money is at the intersection of nearly every aspect of modern life. Most of us take the monetary [...]

Summary Is the US contributing to the militarization of cyberspace? Cyberwar. A conflict without foot soldiers, guns, or missiles. Instead the attacks are launched by computer hackers. Digital spy rings. Information thieves. Cyberarmies of kids, criminals, terrorists – some backed by nation states. But is cyber war really a threat? Can cyber war actually cripple [...]

Summary Malcolm X (May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz[1] (Arabic: الحاجّ مالك الشباز‎), was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers, he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in [...]

Summary There’s a world wide revolution going on.. it goes beyond Mississippi, it goes beyond Alabama, it goes beyond Harlem.. What is it revolting against? The power structure. The American power structure? No. The French power structure? No. The English power structure? No. Then what power structure? An international western power structure. Malcolm X: Prince [...]

In the week since the death of Whitney Houston, a lot of things have transpired–the speculation over what led to her death, the Grammys, the public mourning of a music legend, the anguish felt by her daughter Bobbi Kristina, mother Cissy and other family and close friends, the speculations on whether ex-husband Bobby Brown would [...]

Summary Slavery by Another Name is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans’ most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced [...]

Summary Surplus: Terrorized Into Being Consumers is an award winning Swedish documentary film on consumerism and globalization, created by director Erik Gandini and editor Johan Söderberg. It looks at the arguments for capitalism and technology, such as greater efficiency, more time and less work, and argues that these are not being fulfilled, and they never [...]