Dinner & Doc Survey: June 16, 2020
This survey was done to determine the preference of eleven videos to view and discuss for the Dinner & Documentary series currently meeting online. The score for each video was calculated by rank weight (11-1) times the number of rank votes. The results are shown in the chart below.
A8: What is Reality? is the winner by a 2 lengths! So the next video to watch is What is Reality?, which is a PBS video in The Brain series. It is available on PBS for Passport Members (you have to donate something) or on Kanopy which is available through your local library for free. Create a Kanopy account here and then search for "What is Reality?" in Kanopy.
All the videos in the survey are listed below with their answer code. In the survey, the videos were listed in random order. Details for Question 1 of the survey are available in table format here.
A1: Can We Take a Joke?
In the age of social media, nearly every day brings a new eruption of outrage. While people have always found something to be offended by, their ability to organize a groundswell of opposition to - and public censure of - their offender has never been more powerful. Today, we're all one clumsy joke away from public ruin. CAN WE TAKE A JOKE? offers a thought-provoking and wry exploration of outrage…
A2: Copwatch - An Organization Dedicated to Filming the Police
This acclaimed documentary follows "WeCopwatch", an organization dedicated to filming the police. Its members captured the original videos of the deaths of Eric Garner in Staten Island and Freddie Gray in Baltimore that ignited the entire nation. Nominated for Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival. "It's uplifting and emotional, and there's a glimmer of possibility in an interaction with an officer near its end that turns both thoughtful and…
A3: The Codes of Gender - Identity & Performance in Popular Culture
Communication scholar Sut Jhally applies the late sociologist Erving Goffman's groundbreaking analysis of advertising to the contemporary commercial landscape in this provocative new film about gender as a ritualized cultural performance. Uncovering a remarkable pattern of gender-specific poses, Jhally explores Goffman's central claim that the way the body is displayed in advertising communicates normative ideas about masculinity and femininity. The film looks beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells...
A4: Money for Nothing - Behind the Business of Pop Music
Of all mass cultural forms, popular music has historically been characterized by the greatest independence for artists and allowing access to a broader diversity of voices. However, in the contemporary period, this independence is being threatened by a shrinking number of record companies, the centralization of radio ownership and playlists, and the increasing integration of popular music into the broader advertising and commercial aspects of the market…
A5: All Governments Lie - Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone
Independent journalists expose government lies and corporate deception, inspired by the legendary investigative journalist I.F. Stone. With government deception rampant, and intrusion of state surveillance into private life never more egregious, independent voices like Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Amy Goodman are crucially important. All three are inspired by the iconoclastic rebel journalist named I. F. Stone, whose fearless, independent reporting from 1953 to 1971 filled a tiny 4-page newsletter…
A6: Art of the Prank
This documentary is about New York artist Joey Skaggs, the godfather of the media hoax. Famed for such media fictions as the Celebrity Sperm Bank, the Cathouse for Dogs, the Fat Squad, and Portofess, all reported as fact by prestigious journalists, he's one of America's greatest living satirists. When Skaggs decides to pull off the most demanding hoax of his career, filmmaker Andrea Marini gets a unique view into the…
A7: Digital Disconnect - Fake News, Privacy and Democracy
In this era of Facebook privacy breaches, "fake news" and filter bubbles, the essential film DIGITAL DISCONNECT trains its sights on the relationship between the internet and democracy. Tracing the internet's history as a publicly funded government project in the 1960s to its full-scale commercialization today, the film traces how the revolutionary, democratizing potential of the internet has been radically compromised by the growing and unaccountable power of a handful of telecom and tech monopolies.
A8: What is Reality?
Dr. David Eagleman takes viewers on an extraordinary journey, exploring how the brain, locked in silence and darkness without direct access to the world, conjures the rich and beautiful world we all take for granted.
A9: Open Sesame: The Story of Seeds
An emotional film that illuminates what is at stake and what can be done to protect the source of nearly all our food. Providing the basis for everything from fabric to food to fuels, seeds are as essential to life as the air we breathe and the water we drink. Unfortunately, corporations are co-opting seed genetics and hiding behind patent law in the process. In the past, seeds were communal....
A10: Love Thy Nature
Narrated by Liam Neeson, LOVE THY NATURE points to how deeply we've lost touch with nature - and takes us on a spellbinding journey through the beauty and intimacy of our relationship with the natural world.
Neeson is the voice of "Sapiens" (our collective humankind) who, in the past few hundred years, has come to believe that we have transcended nature. Yet, experts uncover how a new era of nature-connection might be dawning: "Biomimicry" scientists look to the natural world for the most brilliant cutting-edge inventions, social ecologists unveil how nature restores communities, and doctors are finding new ways in which nature heals the body, mind, and brain.
A11: My stroke of insight
A TED Talk from 2008. Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions -- motion, speech, self-awareness -- shut down one by one. An astonishing story.