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12 Episodes 2013 - 2013
Episode 1
Follows three children whose families are struggling to get by and shows what life in modern America looks like through their eyes.
Episode 2
Dan Snow travels to Syria to see how the current civil war has been shaped by the country's tumultuous history, unpicking the historic divisions between the myriad factions.
Episode 3
Documentary. The father of an RAF reservist killed in Basra in 2007 travels to the Iraqi city to discover the impact of the war and the subsequent occupation on ordinary Iraqis.
Episode 4
In August 2012, 34 miners were shot dead by police as they protested outside a mine. Peter Hain MP uncovers a day of shocking brutality and disturbing allegations.
Episode 5
Author and mafia historian John Dickie uncovers the truth about Italy's most powerful mafia, the 'Ndrangheta', believed to be Europe's biggest cocaine traffickers.
Episode 6
Investigating the obesity epidemic engulfing India's growing middle class. Anita Rani travels to Mumbai to meet some of India's overweight teenagers.
Episode 7
In November last year the American state of Colorado voted to legalize the recreational use of cannabis. It is the most radical experiment in drugs policy for generations and the world will be looking to see what happens, particularly to drug use amongst teenagers. In this hour long documentary for This World, clinical psychologist and addiction expert Professor John Marsden heads to Denver, the state capital, to assess the likely impact of legalization on a country already suffering an epidemic of teenage marijuana use. At a local high school, John hears from A grade students who explain that getting stoned is now more socially acceptable than getting drunk. At an addiction clinic that treats children as young as 12, John hears how marijuana is already the number one reason for kids to enter residential programs more than alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy and other drugs combined. With rates of teenage cannabis use in the USA the highest that they have been in years, it is widely acknowledged the war on drugs has failed. However the question is, will full legalization manage to take the selling of the drug out of the hands of the street dealers and into the hands of the legitimate business people and be the answer to stopping America's kids from getting stoned?
Episode 8
In January 2013, 39 people died and dozens of workers were held hostage when terrorists stormed a gas plant in Algeria. British survivors tell their dramatic and harrowing stories.
Episode 9
Dan Snow travels to Congo to reveal how its troubled history has turned one of the world's potentially richest countries into one of its poorest.
Episode 10
50 mins
While the global population keeps growing, Japan is facing a very different future which could see their population shrink by a third in just 40 years. One reason is that the Japanese are having fewer babies. The first of three programmes exploring global population trends for the award-winning This World strand, No Sex Please, We're Japanese investigates the causes behind Japan's baby shortage and how it could have serious economic consequences for the future of the country. As part of a journey across Japan to find out why men and women are drifting apart and having far less sex than most other nations, Anita Rani explores the Otaku culture - a world of nerds and geeks obsessed with computer games and Manga cartoons - which has led many Japanese men to withdraw from the whole dating game. She meets two men in their late thirties who have been dating virtual teenage girlfriends for years as part of a role playing game. Worlds apart from the fantasy girls of the Otaku culture, Anita also meets working professional women who struggle to work and have children in a society still dominated by traditional gender roles. Low birth rates, combined with longer life expectancy, is inevitably leaving Japan with an old and rapidly aging population. Already a quarter of Japanese people are over 65 - and 50,000 are over a 100 years old. Anita visits a group of cheerleading pensioners and a prison with a wing especially designed for pensioners and looks at how the population trends in the country add to a debt problem worse than that of Greece and an uncertain future for a country that still is the third largest economy in the world.
Episode 11
In crowded Manila, the capital of the Philippines, Anita Rani follows the lives of three different women and visits a hospital where up to 100 babies are born each day.
Episode 12
Statistician Professor Hans Rosling presents a spectacular portrait of our rapidly changing world, showing how the problems of rapid population growth are starting to be conquered.