Coming in May 2022
Featuring voices from across the U.S. and around the globe, connect your audience to the world with these unique stories and perspectives. This month, we evaluate the information war being fought over Ukraine and the Yaquis fight for continued independence in Mexico, discover how scientists and researchers hope to utilize micro-robots as a medical tool and cactus juice for plastic, and celebrate Kristal Ambrose’s role in the Bahamas ban on single use plastic. See below for details and more unique stories.
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See below for a curated selection of high performing videos.
Docs and Specials
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The Documentary: War on Truth
One hour
April 30, 2022 – May 6, 2022
The BBC’s specialist disinformation reporter Marianna Springs investigates the extraordinary information war being fought over Ukraine through the stories of those who have become caught up in it. This conflict is happening parallel to the battle on the ground – and it’s a fight that also has real consequences for the people whose lives it touches. Marianna tracks their tales, and the twists and turns of information warfare.
Assignment: Mexico: the Yaqui fight back
Half hour
May 5 – 11, 2022
In Mexico, the Yaqui of Sonora are known as, ‘the undefeated’. In spite of being hunted, enslaved and exiled, they are the only indigenous group never to have surrendered to Spanish colonial forces or the Mexican government. Somehow, eight communities survived dotted along the River Yaqui. But there are deep divisions. Most of all, over whether a gas pipeline should be allowed on their land. Anabela Carlon is a legal representative for the Yaqui, and is adamant it will not happen.
The Documentary: The Advertising Trap
One hour
May 21 – 27, 2022
Digital advertising has taken over the world. But is it all based on smoke and mirrors? Ed Butler investigates what some people claim is a massive collective deception – a trillion dollar marketing pitch that simply doesn’t deliver value to any of those paying for it.
Monthly BBC Video Selections:
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Why is That?: The robot smaller than the width of a hair
- Description: Scientists at Cornell University have created a tiny micro-robot that “walks” using four legs. Invisible to the naked eye, 10 of the computer chip bots could fit within the full-stop at the end of this sentence. Their legs can be independently triggered to bend using laser light. As the laser is toggled back and forth between the front and back legs, the robot walks. It would take less than a week to make a swarm of a million of the robots, which Itai Cohen and Paul McEuen Labs hope could be adapted to become a medical tool. They are small enough to be injected into the body and Prof Cohen hopes eventually robots like these could be designed to hunt down and destroy cancer cells. (Image: Microbot, Credit: Marc Miskin / Itai Cohen and Paul McEuen Labs / Cornell University, USA.) Video by Jennifer Green, interview by Ania Lichtarowicz and Gareth Mitchell.
- Suggested social copy: Scientists have created a microscopic walking robot that is shorter, thinner and narrower than the width of a human hair.
- Duration: 1 minute 24 seconds
People Fixing the World: How to make biodegradable ‘plastic’ from cactus juice
- Description: This Mexican researcher has discovered a way to turn cactus leaves into a material with similar properties to plastic. She says it’s not toxic and is biodegradable. A film by Tom Heyden for People Fixing the World.
- Suggested social copy: A Mexican researcher turning cactus leaves into a plastic-like material.
- Duration: 2 minutes 33 seconds
Global Citizen: The teacher who convinced The Bahamas to ban plastic
- Description: Kristal Ambrose founded The Bahamas Plastic Movement in 2013 and aims to tackle the serious problem of plastic pollution in The Bahamas. The 29-year-old started tuition-free youth camps in order to educate the country’s children and also drafted a bill which she took to the environment minister. Her work meant that The Bahamas introduced a nationwide ban on single-use plastic in 2020. (Photo: Kristal Ambrose. Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize) Video produced by Daniel South.
- Suggested social copy: Kristal Ambrose founded The Bahamas Plastic Movement in 2013 and aims to tackle the serious problem of plastic pollution in The Bahamas.
- Duration: 2 minutes 46 seconds
Wellbeing: Gong baths: Meditating through sound
- Description: A gong bath is a sound bath that “cleanses” the mind and the body. It’s a tradition that goes back 4,000 years but Suraya Sam’s 90 minute sessions are popular with millennials in Singapore. Produced by Olive Faure and Karishma Chanrai Filmed by Tariq Hawari Photo: A woman sitting in front of a gong Credit: BBC.
- Suggested social copy: Relax and find out about 90 minute gong bath sessions in Singapore.
- Duration: 3 minutes 2 seconds
