I’ve just discovered that the excellent PBS documentary A Brilliant Madness that looks at the life of Nobel-prize winning mathematician, John Nash, is available online either as streamed video or as a torrent.
Nash was famously the subject of the Oscar-winning film, A Beautiful Mind, although the while the main plot elements are true – he both won the Nobel prize and experienced decades of psychosis – his life was heavily fictionalised to the point of being schmaltzy.
The PBS documentary is a more honest, but no less inspirational, look at Nash, and is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning biography by Silvia Nasar.
Nash himself gives an articulate account of his own illness and how society deals with those who experience other realities, while the documentary traces Nash’s sometimes less-than-flattering earlier life story to his later years where he is widely considered to be an altogether more gentle and humane individual.
If you want to know the real story behind A Beautiful Mind or more about Nash it is essential viewing.
Link to information on the documentary from PBS.
Link to flash streamed version.
Link to torrent.
Mind Hacks 