Documentaries

Robert Kenner's documentary looks inside American industrial food: chicken houses, feedlots, slaughterhouses and seed patents. For anyone who wants to know where supermarket food comes from.

A 10-episode ESPN and Netflix docuseries on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, built around never-aired footage of their final title season. For anyone interested in drive, leadership and team dynamics.

Jonah Hill's documentary about his psychiatrist, Phil Stutz, and the simple drawn tools Stutz uses to help patients handle pain, fear and change. For anyone curious about practical therapy.

A 2021 documentary that follows physician Gabor Maté as he argues that unhealed trauma lies beneath much addiction, mental illness and chronic disease. For readers of Maté and anyone curious about trauma-informed care.

HBO's 2017 documentary traces how Warren Buffett grew from a numbers-obsessed Omaha boy into one of the best-known investors in the world, and how his wife Susie shaped the man behind the money. For anyone curious about value investing and a frugal, rational life.

Six documentary makers adapt Levitt and Dubner's bestseller into segments on baby names, cheating in sumo, crime and abortion, and paying students for grades. For anyone who wants the book's ideas on screen.

Charles Ferguson's Oscar-winning documentary explains the 2008 financial crisis and argues that bankers, regulators and economists caused it and escaped blame. For anyone who wants to understand the crash.

Matt D'Avella's documentary follows Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, known as The Minimalists, and others who chose to own less in order to live more deliberately. For anyone who feels buried by stuff, debt or busyness.

David Gelb's documentary about Jiro Ono, an 85-year-old sushi master who runs a 10-seat Tokyo restaurant with three Michelin stars, and what a lifetime of repetition costs and gives. For anyone who wants to master a craft.

The Oscar-winning documentary about Alex Honnold's attempt to climb El Capitan without a rope. For anyone curious about fear, preparation and the cost of chasing one goal.

Former Google, Facebook and Twitter insiders explain how social media is built to hold attention, mixed with a scripted family drama. For anyone who wants to understand the attention economy.

Ava DuVernay's documentary traces a line from slavery to mass incarceration through one clause of the Thirteenth Amendment. For anyone who wants the history behind US prisons.

A three-part National Geographic docuseries in which Jared Diamond argues that geography, not people, explains why Europeans conquered so much of the world. For anyone curious about the roots of global inequality.