Ergot: The Story of a Parasitic Fungus

In the 1970s, Dr. Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin significantly contributed to the development and psychopharmaceutical use of MDMA: a catalyst to personal doors entombed or unknown. His widow, co-author, and research partner, Ann—alongside friends, family, and colleagues—gives a guided tour of their life and laboratory, reflecting on how risks and revelations opened a world of compound enlightenment. Stippled with spirituality, sadness, and skepticism, the Shulgins’ chemical love story examines the power of psychedelic psychotherapy, sacred alchemy, and challenging the path of misunderstood resistance.

This 1971 color anti-drug use and abuse film was produced by Concept Films and directed by Brian Kellman for Encyclopedia Britannica. “Weed: The Story of Marijuana” combines time-lapse, montage, illustrations, animation (by Paul Fierlinger and emigre Pavel Vošický) and dramatized, documentary-style interviews to survey the evolving role of cannabis in U.S. society, with emphasis on the legal risks faced by young people. A unique score of experimental synthesizer music is provided by Tony Luisi on an EMS VCS 3 “Putney”

Polarograf

In search of the lucrative matsutake mushroom, two former soldiers discover the means to gradually heal their wounds of war. Roger, a self-described 'fall-down drunk' and sniper in Vietnam, and Kouy, a Cambodian refugee who fought the Khmer Rouge, bonded in the bustling tent-city known as Mushroom Camp, which pops up each autumn in the Oregon woods. Their friendship became an adoptive family; according to a Cambodian custom, if you lose your family like Kouy, you must rebuilt it anew. Now, however, this new family could be lost. Roger's health is declining and trauma flashbacks rack his mind; Kouy gently aids his family before the snow falls and the hunting season ends, signaling his time to leave.

Jack Parsons: Jet Propelled Antichrist is a story about one of the fathers of modern rocketry and a founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) which as part of NASA still leads the way in the development of rockets and the exploration of space. He was also an occultist, a sorcerer and a magus. The infamous magician Aleister Crowley the self-proclaimed Great Beast called him son. He called himself ‘The Antichrist’ and was repeatedly investigated by the FBI. At the age of 38 Parsons died in a mysterious explosion that made headlines around the US. Officially it was a tragic scientific accident — other interpretations of the event persist to this day.

That smelly, pale yellow liquid that people flush down the toilet every day is an industrial fertilizer, a diagnostic tool, a medicine, a renewable energy resource; it is an inexhaustible substance that is produced daily in huge quantities. This is the golden story of urine.

As the Dead Sea shrinks, engineers prepare a daring solution: connect it with the Red Sea by way of a massive desalination plant. If it works, it could stabilise the lake and ease regional tensions.

Documentary about births around the different cultures and regions of the world.

A documentary that looks at systemic sexism faced by women scientists in STEM fields.

Full step-by-step LSD Synthesis steps

Professor Richard Fortey delves into the fascinating and normally-hidden kingdom of fungi. From their spectacular birth, through their secretive underground life to their final explosive death, Richard reveals a remarkable world that few of us understand or even realise exists - yet all life on Earth depends on it.

A look at the daily life of midwives across Quebec.

Dipendra Bhandari follows a family from Rolpa as they head up north to the Himalayan foothills in search of the yarsagumba, the fungus that grows out of caterpillars prized for its virile properties. They join the caravan of thousands of other Yarsa hunters on their yearly trek up the treacherous yet breathtaking mountain trails.

Dr Michael Mosley explores the bizarre and fascinating world of parasites by turning his body into a living laboratory and deliberately infesting himself with them.

The kitchen is an alchemist’s workshop, and the chef is a master of secret teachings. He commands molecules to bubble, boil, rise, change their state, shape, and colour. This educational film shows that cooking an egg or letting dough rise can be a fascinating chemical and physical process, and that our body is a small laboratory, with its own test tubes, gauges, and instruments.

This video provides step-by-step instructions for cultivating Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms at home. Viewers areintroduced to the mushroom lifecycle, sterilization techniques, inoculation methods, substrates, incubation, terrariums, humidification methods, casings, agar media, strain isolation, and bulk growing.

How can we harness the power of mushrooms to fight climate change? In the American West, wildfires spread fast. To slow the flames, forest managers are thinning the forests. Cutting down trees. 
But where does all that wood go? Nearby on the agricultural prairie, soils sit degraded from generations of traditional farming. The soil lacks the organic matter they need to thrive. Could these two challenges provide solutions to each other—
with a little help from Mother Nature? Peaks to Prairie is a short film about nature-based climate solutions and how mushrooms can play a key role.

Injectable anti-inflammatories, anticoagulants, anti-infectives, anticancer drugs and even cotton wools are in short supply. Like many others in France, the pharmacy at Rennes hospital is constantly on the edge. Over the past two decades, shortages of medicines and health products have increased twentyfold in Europe. With almost all laboratories affected, practitioners and health establishments are forced to juggle with quotas to make up for shortages. Some even have to prioritise patients in terms of access to treatments, according to scales established by the laboratories. In the Netherlands, hospital pharmacies have resigned themselves to manufacturing the molecules they lack.

Kate Humble and Helen Czerski reveal the inner workings of the sun and investigate why scientists think changes in the sun's behaviour may have powerful effects on our climate.

Coming in all shapes and sizes, bacteria are present in every corner of the Earth. Their purposes and types are even more diverse, with only 1% being truly harmful. Dive into the world of Bacteria to experience the latest discoveries and scientific knowledge surrounding these plentiful and necessary microbes.