ADAM CURTIS

Things come and go in the news cycle like waves of fever.

Together, the western elites and Gaddafi helped to lead us into a simplistic two-dimensional vision of the world - full of exaggerations and falsehoods. A fake bubble of certainty that has imprisoned us in the West - and is now preventing us from understanding what is really going on in the world outside.

Of course there are many factors that led to the Iranian revolution, but back in 1951, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company - which would later become BP - and its principal owner, the British government, conspired to destroy democracy and install a western-controlled regime in Iran.

Henrietta Lacks' cells are immortal. They are known as the HeLa cell line, and they have become deeply involved in all sorts of medical and genetic research - sometimes in the most unexpected ways.

In our age of individualism, we see computers as ways through which we can express our individuality. But the truth is that the computers are really good at spotting the very opposite. The computers can see how similar we are, and they then have the ability to agglomerate us together into groups that have the same behaviours.

I have a suspicion that the politicians' revival of the old behaviourist ideas and techniques will be helped and reinforced by a powerful ally - the machines we have built. The computers.

Tyler Kent himself is weird and mesmerising - but still unrepentantly anti-Semitic.

Throughout the western world, new systems have risen up whose job is to constantly record and monitor the present - and then compare that to the recorded past. The aim is to discover patterns, coincidences and correlations, and from that, find ways of stopping change. Keeping things the same.

In 'Mad Men,' we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and unease. They feel there is something more, something beyond. And they feel stuck.

At the end of the nineteenth century, a fanatical craze for physical fitness swept through Britain. Millions of men and women took up gymnastics, body building, and other physical exercises. Such a thing had never happened before, and it was given a name - Physical Culture.

We live in a time when all elites, whether on the left or the right, believe in rigid rules that say there is no alternative to the present political and economic system.

Everyone goes on holiday in Britain. Even Hell's Angels.

Events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control. Donald Trump, Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, random bomb attacks.

So much of the language that surrounds us - from things like economics, management theory, and the algorithms built into computer systems - appears to be objective and neutral. But in fact, it is loaded with powerful, and very debatable, political assumptions about how society should work and what human beings are really like.

In the early 1970s in Washington, a small group of young conservative activists came together to try and change American politics. They called themselves the New Right, and they were convinced that unless they did something drastic, the liberals and the left-wingers in America were going to take over the country.

Both individuals and societies tell themselves stories to simplify and make sense of the messy chaos of reality.

The latest rule is: you cannot have protectionism - otherwise you will get a world war. Other rules say you cannot have collective ideas that involve the surrender of the individual to the group - otherwise, you get totalitarianism or, even worse, religion.

Back in the 1950s, America set out to intervene in Syria, liberate the people from a corrupt elite, and bring about a new democracy. They did this with the best of intentions, but it led to disaster. And out of that disaster, the Assad regime rose to power.

I have always been fascinated by the way music can completely change the way you watch film - and how you feel as you watch the images.

I have always wanted to make a series of films which would be like an 'emotional history' that conveys what it feels like to live through history as an experience rather than a grand story. It would be about the relationship between the tiny fragments and moments of personal experience, and the continual backdrop of big events.

In the battle for Kobane on the Syrian border, everyone talks about the enemy - IS - and the frightening ideas that drive them. No one talks about the Kurdish defenders and what inspires them.

BP is accused of destroying the wildlife and coastline of America, but if you look back into history, you find that BP did something even worse to America. They gave the world Ayatollah Khomeini.

Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events. But now there are no big stories, and politicians react randomly to every new crisis - leaving us bewildered and disorientated.

The idea of elegance and aristocratic indulgence of an ocean cruise was born out of the image of the rich men and women who ruled the British Empire slowly sailing to India and the Far East while sipping gin and tonic on deck - served by men in white jackets.

Following the principle that you should know your enemy, the BBC has assiduously recorded the relentless rise of Rupert Murdoch and his assault on the old 'decadent' elites of Britain.