Hidden Brain
The Hidden Brain program by Shankar Vedantam began as NPR podcast in 2015 and became a program in 2017. It is one of the best resources for learning about various factors affecting how we as human beings acquire and process information and use it in our decision-making.
The Body in Question
The Body in Question (1978) by Dr. Jonathan Miller was both an excellent book and a 13-part BBC television series that explores the human body, medical history, and perception. In it, Dr. Miller presents an understanding of how we recognize ourselves with relation to the world around us and illustrates how our emotional identity is a factor of more than just simple physical sensations.
Root Shock
In her book, Root Shock (2004), Mindy Thompson Fullilove explains how our environment becomes part of our psychological makeup which when radically disrupted can leave people with a form of PTSD. This can cause sociological problems in communities which have their built environment or natural surroundings dramatically altered from what the people in them have become accustomed. By looking at the impacts on African American communities in various cities such as Newark, Pittsburgh, and Roanoke it is possible to see how our environment is incorporated as part of a person's individual emotional identity and can be wounded by a significant alteration to interfere with a person's view of their place in reality.
The Ascent of Man
In his BBC series and book, The Assent of Man, esteemed mathmatician Jacob Bronowski before his death examined how the human species advanced from a nomadic species to spawn numerous civilizations up until the present day. He explores how various technological developments created, enabled, and framed civilizations throughout time. His thesis sheds light on how the physical, social, and technological environment of the day have determined humanity's culture and social structure. This gives a good grounding in understanding how our current society and the global situation of today came about.
Connections
James Burke created 3 Connections series (1978, 1994, and 1997) with at least one accompanying book. These were intended to be a follow up to The Assent of Man series by Jacob Bronowski. In each episode he tracks a number of seemingly unconnected technological developments which were subsequently utilized by a later unrelated tech to advance it to a new level which then eventually led to a separate application for a much different purpose. These connections represent an ability of innovators to latch onto what others may have done, frequently with less than significant success, only to have enabled a next step that finally resulted in something widely recognized and utilized in modern times.