Using the 'what if?' approach to history, Rory Medcalf argues the pros and cons of alternatives to the Vietnam War.

Can a couple of bullets really seal the fate of millions? Virtual JFKintroduces audiences to virtual or counterfactual history - the 'whatif?' scenario. It asks: what would have become of the Vietnam War ifPresident John F. Kennedy had survived the assassin's bullet in 1963 andbeen re-elected in 1964? Would there have been a Vietnam War at all?

It is all well and good to say that Napoleon would have won the battleof Waterloo had he made more sensible breakfast choices (and thus notbeen plagued by stomach ulcers, constipation or other digestiveailments), or that the Roman world would have skipped a vicious civilwar if Cleopatra's nose had been shorter or Mark Antony avowedly gay, orthat Europe's golden age would have continued if Archduke Ferdinand'scar had taken a different street in Sarajevo in 1914, or that therewould have been no Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 if a few of theChinese Communist Party's faceless men had been less worried about theirnext promotion.

However, if we're going to do virtual history properly, we need to gofurther than this documentary and think about how one player's choiceintersects with another's, and put together an argument about where allthis leads in the long term. Sometimes in history, what seems the rightdecision at the time turns out to have all sorts of unintended,unforeseen consequences - good intentions do not always yield goodresults.

Eighty-one years after the Great Depression, Mark Jones asks if we've learnt anything from the most significant economic disaster of the 20th Century.

This September marks 81 years since the world was rocked by the infamous 1929 stock market crash. Back then, the American public was completely consumed by stock market fever, greed, and the pursuit of easy money.

It was widely held that the prosperity and excesses of the Roaring Twenties would last forever, and it was against anyone's interest to argue otherwise.Dissenters who predicted a market crash were systematically ignored and ridiculed.

But as September 1929 approached the slide began and nothing could stop it. The rout officially began in earnest on October 29 - Black Tuesday. Mass panicgripped the markets, stockbrokers couldn't keep up with sell orders and the world watched in horror as the NYSE plunged for week after dismal week. SomeUS$30 billion in losses were racked up in those first weeks, more than the US had spent on WWI.

Philip Blenkinsop at work in Nepal.

A conversation with filmmaker David Bradbury about the making of My Asian Heart.

In My Asian Heart, one uncompromising Australian chronicler of war and struggle tells the story of another. Filmmaker David Bradbury - renowned for documentaries about repression and revolution - focuses on the life of Philip Blenkinsop, a photographer who goes to exceptional lengths to create art out of the pain and courage he witnesses in Asia’s lesser-known conflicts. I spoke with David about the challenges of making this film as well as its wider relevance.

RM: My Asian Heart portrays some disturbing moments in recent Asian history, like the democracy riots in Nepal or the fate of the Hmong people in Laos, yet it is much more a character study than a political film. What was your purpose in setting out to make the film – and did it change as the project went along?

DB: I like to make character studies of fascinating people. It has been almost 30 years since I had made Frontline [Bradbury’s Academy-Award nominated documentary about Vietnam War combat cameraman Neil Davis]. I wanted to look again at the moral dilemmas of cameramen and media people in the front lines of war and conflict and political struggles.

Rear view: From the documentary Best Undressed

Strippers (and sex workers) tend not to play to stereotype.

In April this year I had the pleasure of being on a panel at a feminist conference with Elena Jeffreys, the President of Scarlet Alliance, the Australian Sex Workers Association.

Elena is a compelling and articulate advocate for sex workers and their rights. She spoke passionately about the damage that some sections of the feminist movement were doing to sex workers’ struggle to ensure their voices were being taken seriously by politicians and policy makers. She made it very clear that sex workers were sick of being labelled as universal victims of patriarchy by feminist activists who had little appreciation of the diversity of the people who work in her industry and the discrimination they face.

She received rousing applause from hundreds of feminists of all generations. The idea that any woman who chooses to trade her body for sex - or dance naked for that matter - is a dupe of the patriarchy is now a middle class norm. And indeed class is the real elephant in the corner of much debate about porn, sex work and ‘raunch culture’.

Mark Jones learns that finding one's mind raises more questions than it answers.

I think, therefore I am. I think. I am.

At least I think that's what French philosopher René Descartes told us to think.

If you're confused already, you're in good company. The BBC documentary FindingMy Mind, presented by Oxford University professor of mathematics Marcus DuSautoy, has given me a lot of food for thought about this subject.

Private (p)arts

Vaginas, perfect or not, are a compelling subject for a documentary. More than three decades after women's libbers were encouraging women to sit down with a mirror and learn to love their genitalia, discussing vaginas is still somewhat taboo.

Vaginas, perfect or not, are a compelling subject for a documentary. More than three decades after women's libbers were encouraging women to sit down with a mirror and learn to love their genitalia, discussing vaginas is still somewhat taboo.

Male comedians joke about their penises – some even make puppet shows with them. When vaginas go public – Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues being a case in point – it's as much a political statement as a piece of entertainment.

The narrator of the Perfect Vagina, Lisa Rogers, has something approaching a political premise too. Unfortunately, for this viewer, it’s a simplistic and predictable premise which turns out to be tepid moralising dressed up in feminist clothing.

A worshipper in Boca.

Was Karl Marx still kicking around today he'd probably tweak the final version of Das Kapital to replace religion with soccer as the opiate of the masses.

Was Karl Marx still kicking around today he'd probably tweak the final version of Das Kapital to replace religion with soccer as the opiate of the masses.

Athough beer, television, fast food, celebrity gossip, shopping and opiates are all also pretty good opiates of the masses, none seem to come close to the round ball game for generating the same intensity of feeling, the same rapture and eye rolling craziness. 'Football' as it is understood and played almost everywhere but the US and Australia where it remains merely 'soccer', a put-upon minority pursuit is less sport or pastime than a religious cult, with all of the attendant saints and devils, and schisms of belief.

For a long time, while watching Football is God (SBSONE, June 8 at 11:50 pm) and In the Hands of the Gods (SBSONE, June 8 at 10 pm), I was really only thinking like this in metaphorical terms. But as the obsessed, possibly maniacal fans of the Argentinian Boca club in the former doco led me to understand, metaphor might not actually be enough to explain their passions and occasional disconnection from reality.

Mark Jones considers the latest scientific claims on the Turin Shroud's autheniticty but says it shouldn't distract from the real meaning of Easter.

Religion and science are two fascinating subjects most people want to keep at arm’s length. Yet here we have the Shroud of Turin back in the headlines, for both religious and scientific reasons.

Believed to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, the Shroud of Turin will go on display for six weeks from April 10 at its home, the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy.

It has been 10 years since the public was last allowed to lay eyes on the real thing, and more than 1 million people have reserved a spot in the queue this time.

John Birmingham watches 'The Operation' through his fingers and sees an upside to a bit of televisual shock and awe.

Having gone under the knife a couple of times, I must confess myself kind of curious about what it looks like from the other end of the scalpel. I suppose most people would.

I don't know that I'm so curious, however, that I'd be getting a film crew in to shoot the event for the entertainment of viewers around the world. In fact even my own curiosity could probably be sated with a few quick peeks at some blurry still shots.

Still, to each their own eh?

Rory Medcalf sees Major Robert ‘Snuffy’ Gray re-evaluating the campaigns of his beloved US 7th cavalry regiment and wonders if Australia can learn lessons too.

Ghosts of the 7th Cavalry deals with some of the darkest chapters in American military history: episodes of atrocity and tragedy from the 1870s frontier to Vietnam.

Yet it also captures something redemptive about many Americans’ attitude to their violent past. And here there may be a lesson for Australians who have yet fully to come to terms with their own.

This singular film is the story of one man and one unit. The man is Major Robert ‘Snuffy’ Gray, one of America’s most distinguished war veterans, who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and who at 83 began a journey across his homeland to meet old comrades and unburden his soul.