Thirty minutes with British philosopher, mathematician, Nobel winner and anti-nuclear activist Bertrand Russell, conducted by the BBC’s John Freeman in 1959. Russell was 86 years old when this was shot. The format of this program, Face to Face, is fascinating, almost like an interrogation, with lighting just as harsh. The camera zooms in on the subject and they rarely cut away.

Among other topics, the famously free-thinking Russell explains why he’s not a Christian, writing his own obituary, his childhood, how the beauty of the planet was being destroyed during his lifetime and how smoking (literally) saved his life.

At the end Freeman asks the great humanist, historian and thinker:

“Suppose, Lord Russell, this film were to be looked at by our descendants, like a Dead Sea scroll in a thousand years’ time. What would you think is worth telling that generation about the life you’ve lived and the lessons you’ve learned from it?”

Lord Russell gives some very good advice: