Remember John Burstein? Since 1975, he has been educating children (including many of us!) about the human body and the importance of health and nutrition in a rather unique way. Like many superheroes before him, he dons a form-fitting suit and transforms into a shocking alter ego... the living anatomical reference, Slim Goodbody!
posted on Jul 6, 2008 - View this thread

It's like gunning the engine of a car. The recent documentary Unnatural Causes examines the health consequences societal inequalities have on people. The PBS series has a couple dozen embeddable video clips exploring atomic testing, Native American Health, Latino Health and more. One clip examines why when African women come to the U.S., within one generation, their daughters suffer higher rates of premature babies and poorer birth outcomes. One group is putting hundreds of millions of dollars into alleviating health disparities in 14 communities across the country.
posted on Jun 9, 2008 - View this thread

PBS's Frontline has just released Storm Over Everest, a new report that chronicles the 1996 Everest disaster. The story was most notably told by Jon Krakauer in his award-winning book Into Thin Air, which ignited a flurry of letters (pun definitely intended) about the roles of guides and Sherpas on the mountain.
posted on May 14, 2008 - View this thread

"Carrier is not the story of a ship, it’s the story of shipmates." The 10-part documentary series, filmed by 17 filmmakers, focuses on eighteen people during a six-month deployment overseas on the aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz. The series premieres tonight on PBS. Opening of Episode One [6:02] || Preview of The Series [26:47]. Crew interviews and other clips.
posted on Apr 27, 2008 - View this thread

Car of the Future , NOVA's latest episode, is fully online and includes a slew of extras including CC-licensed content, a brief historical overview of "innovative" automobiles, Amory Lovins flogging his Hypercar concept, the Car Talk guys making nuisances of themselves, and much more. (It's no Design for Dreaming, but really, what could be?)
posted on Apr 24, 2008 - View this thread

Sick Around the World, the newest documentary piece produced by PBS's Frontline asks: "Can the U.S. learn anything from the rest of the world about how to run a health care system?" Having previously shared a Pulitzer Prize with The New York Times, and produced such quality programs as Bush's War, this should be well worth a mere hour of your time.
posted on Apr 15, 2008 - View this thread

PBS Frontline explores Growing Up Online. Here's what they learned.
posted on Jan 31, 2008 - View this thread

Write ZOOM, Z-double-oh-M, Box three-five-oh, Boston, Mass, OH-two-ONE-three-FOURRRR!
posted on Jan 2, 2008 - View this thread

Sesame Street video archive from Sesame Workshop itself, searchable and keyword-tagged. It's not quite comprehensive (yet), but includes many Monsterpiece Theatre, Kermit's News Flashes, and Ernie & Bert sketches.
posted on Jan 1, 2008 - View this thread

"Open Vault provides online access to unique and historically important content produced by public television station WGBH for individual and classroom learning. The ever-expanding site contains video excerpts, searchable transcripts, a select number of complete interviews for purchase, and resource management tools." (Requires QuickTime)
posted on Dec 6, 2007 - View this thread

During the 70s and 80s a new phenomenon appeared. Television Hijacking. It started in 1977 when a man in England hijacked the sound broadcast of a newscast. In 1986, a hijacker known as Captain Midnight hijacked HBO in response to their scrambling of television signals. The year after (20 years ago as of today), a character disguised as Max Headroom (a television character) infiltrated two Chicago television studios in one night. First the man infiltrated Channel 9 (WGN) for a few seconds with no sound, and then moved on to attack another Chicago station, this time with sound. After the Max Headroom incident, television hacking incidents were rare in the United States except for this one in Wyoming.
posted on Nov 22, 2007 - View this thread

Triumph of the Nerds is a 1996 three-part documentary recounting the rise of the personal computer, including interviews with Gates, Wozniak and Jobs, among others. It was originally produced for British television, and aired on PBS in the USA. Part One: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Part Two: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Part Three: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Transcripts here. After you watch, you can play the "Guess the Computer" game.
posted on Sep 29, 2007 - View this thread

David Dunlop is a landscape painter. This is the first episode of his new PBS show, Landscapes Through Time, on American Impressionism. (Parts 1, 2, 3)
posted on Sep 16, 2007 - View this thread

This PBS documentary about Anti-Americanism (a hate/love relationship) examines the complicated mixture of envy, pride, admiration, and cultural misunderstanding that characterizes european views. This documentary covers only France, Britain and Poland. Is there comparable Anti-Europeanism similar to Anti-Americanism? Or maybe it's all down to the evil liberal european media [Part 2]?!
posted on Aug 28, 2007 - View this thread

Charlie Rose's new website has been in development over a year as technicians worked with Google to archive over 4,000 hours of interviews all culminating in 8,000 program segments including David Foster Wallace talking about David Lynch, Christopher Hitchens badmouthing religion, and Rem Koolhaas discussing recent changes in China.
posted on Aug 15, 2007 - View this thread

Watch Frontline's "The Persuaders" . Then read up on "neuromarketing". Previously
posted on Aug 4, 2007 - View this thread

"The story of how high officials misled the country has been told. But they couldn't have done it on their own; they needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on." Bill Moyers returned to PBS last night with this documentary (transcript) examining the mainstream media's role in the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq.
posted on Apr 26, 2007 - View this thread

Three small classes of high school students, one in Watsonville, California, one in Jos, Nigeria, and one in Dharamsala, India, are currently collaborating on "Project Happiness". The students are "exchanging their thoughts about what happiness is, and how to behave in ways that promote happiness all around them," drawing on the Dalai Lama's Ethics for the New Millennium (useful 50-page pdf study guide; positive review from Christian Century magazine). In their work creating a curriculum for the book, the students communicate via email, a blog, and videos (an instructor in India describes the project's focus; a "what life is like here" video from India). The podcast section of the official site currently features just one introductory video posted a few weeks ago. The project will culminate in a meeting of all three classes in March 2007 in Dharamsala. A book and a PBS documentary are planned.
posted on Dec 28, 2006 - View this thread

PBS says good night, Melanie, now security will escort you out. Melanie Martinez was the star of The Good Night Show, the marquee show on the PBS-Comcast preschool channel, Sprout. At least, she was until this week, when a parody PSA promoting "technical virginity" (video, NSFW) from her starving actress days resurfaced, thanks to a Memphis radio station. PBS fired her, saying that the "video is inappropriate for her role as a preschool program host," even though it pre-dated her Sprout work by many years. A new meaning for the word dooced?
posted on Jul 21, 2006 - View this thread

3-Year-Old's Birthday Party Theme: 'NewsHour'
posted on Jun 17, 2006 - View this thread

Mr. Rogers before the Senate in 1969. [video; YouTube]
posted on May 25, 2006 - View this thread

Forty-nine published plays. Four Pulitzer Prizes. Three marriages. A suicide attempt. A celebrity for a father. A drug-addicted mother who blamed her habit on her son. A daughter estranged, a son who committed suicide. A Nobel Prize, the only ever awarded to an American playwright.
Eugene O'Neill from inside out: a documentary film for American Experience. More inside.
posted on Mar 30, 2006 - View this thread

The Eyes of Nye is "Bill Nye the Science Guy" for adults, with topics like "Cloning," "Pseudoscience," and "The Evolution of Sex" with its montage of happily fornicating animals. The topics are more serious but the humor is still there. The show's web site has video clips and extra information related to each episode. [both links use Flash]
posted on Dec 13, 2005 - View this thread

family at war an excellent documentary of a family who lost their son in iraq - particularly moving is the soldiers determined, soft-spoken mother who is examining the reasons for her loss.
posted on Nov 14, 2005 - View this thread

The Torture Question tonight on PBS by far, television's most in-depth look at how the controversial interrogation policy evolved after a major power struggle within the Bush administration. (via Rocky Mountain News) The problem, of course, is that it's often the things we'd rather not think about that we most need to hear, especially when those things are actions taken in all of our names with an eye toward making us safer. Ellen Gray Watch a preview here.
posted on Oct 18, 2005 - View this thread

"Operation Offset" is what the Republicans are calling their budget cut plan to pay for Hurricane Katrina. Will there be tax cuts for the rich? Nope. The great majority of the proposed cuts target the elderly and the poor, heavily targeting Medicare. They eliminate all federal funding for energy conservation, the "Energy Star" program, energy efficient vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, high-speed rail, light rail, PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, AmeriCorps, the "Even Start" program, the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, security/anti-drug funding for innercity schools, and all federal loans to grad students. Also facing cuts are the Global AIDS Initiative, the EPA, the Center for Disease Control, pensions and healthcare plans for retired federal workers, job programs and revitalization funds for poor neighborhoods, the school lunch program, community health centers, and health care for soldiers.
posted on Sep 27, 2005 - View this thread

Moonwalking birds. This is an awesome video of a Manakin bird doing the Michael Jackson thing.
posted on Sep 19, 2005 - View this thread

The first episode of NerdTV is out but the site is so inundated with users that the official torrent is the only way to get a copy at the moment. It's an online-only series featuring hour long episodes filled with interviews done by Robert Cringely.
posted on Sep 7, 2005 - View this thread

Jackie Brenston , Ike Turner, Joe Hill Louis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and of course Elvis all passed thur Sun Records in the 1950's. PBS American Masters Good Rockin' Tonight The Legacy of Sun Records has good music and history of the blues and rock and roll. Paul McCarty, Live and other preform the old tunes.
posted on Aug 3, 2005 - View this thread

NerdTV. “Beginning Sept. 6, PBS will make available – exclusively over the Internet [and under a Creative Commons License] – broadcast television’s first entirely downloadable series, featuring PBS technology columnist and industry insider Robert X. Cringely’s interviews with personalities from the ever-changing world of technology.” [Via]
posted on Jul 13, 2005 - View this thread

Private Warriors: FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith travels throughout Kuwait and Iraq to give viewers an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at companies like Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, and its civilian army. Sixty minutes of absolutely fascinating and astonishing video is online.
posted on Jun 24, 2005 - View this thread

Elmo Strikes Back? Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are examining payments to two Republican lobbyists that were not disclosed to the corporation's board, and whether Mr. Tomlinson had the authority to approve the payments. PreviousFilter.
posted on Jun 16, 2005 - View this thread

House Appropriations panel eliminates ALL public funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS Ready To Learn. From this morning's Cynopsis:Kids e-newsletter: "In our nation's capital yesterday, a House Appropriations subcommittee voted to approve a new bill that will see budgets sliced for both public TV and radio. Specifically in the line of fire in the kid TV universe is the elimination of the full $23m in funding for Public TV's Ready to Learn initiative. Ready to Learn provides some funds for PBS series including, Sesame Street, Between the Lions, Arthur, Reading Rainbow, Clifford the Big Red Dog and could have Buster sending smoke signals instead of postcards. [...] Though the President proposed a small budget reduction for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting this past winter, yesterday's subcommittee vote would also eliminate all government monetary funds intended for the CPB over the course of the next two years, beginning with a $100m decrease in funding to $300m for next year." Perhaps this will free up some money for No Child Left Behind?
posted on Jun 10, 2005 - View this thread

That "liberal bastion" PBS and that "wacky" Christian Right AGREEING on something? Does the "Sith Lord of unbridaled capitalism" really deserve to be hated? Does it bear watching? A new movie will take a look: (Registration -free link). Why are growing numbers "ready to join the ranks of all right-thinking people the world over in declaring Wal-Mart an outpost of hell on earth"??? The full 60 minute Frontline program video is available online.
posted on Jun 6, 2005 - View this thread

Sunday the National Conference on Media Reform featured the first public speech by Bill Moyers since he left PBS. "I always knew Nixon would be back, again and again. I just didn’t know that this time he would ask to be Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting."
posted on May 16, 2005 - View this thread

PBS: crosshaired? NYTimes link. Previously, related. Hmm. No mention of David Brooks!
posted on May 2, 2005 - View this thread

a-wimoweh a-wimoweh..
In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.
via
posted on Apr 30, 2005 - View this thread

"Declining by Degrees:" Five Univeristy of Arizona students try to survive the megauniversity
A provocative NYT article summarizes an upcoming PBS special (1, 2) on undergraduate education at large public universities. The average time to complete the BA is 4.7 years. Students describe acquiring "maze smart" skills for navigating institutions where they are completely anonymous. Professors are castigated for striking a grade-inflating "bargain" with underachieving students so they can attend less to teaching and more to research. Assistant coaches patrol the campus in golf carts looking for student athletes playing hooky. Millions of high school grads humiliated every year across the country--should they even bother with the "paper"?
posted on Apr 25, 2005 - View this thread

French In Action is now available for free, online. (click on the "VoD" link to the right of each episode; free registration required ) Long a staple of high school French classes and late-night PBS broadcasts, French In Action is notable for teaching French without translating it; meaning is made clear through context and repetition. It's an approach some people find useless and others consider "so excellent it almost justifies the invention of television ". If you'd rather learn Spanish, there's Destinos and for German, there's Fokus Deutsch--but neither one features Valérie Allain, subject of intense fascination (and occasionally creepy obsession.) ( Unfortunately, free streaming of French in Action doesn't seem to be available outside the US and Canada; Destinos and Fokus Deutsch have no such restrictions.)
posted on Apr 25, 2005 - View this thread

“Because if Mr. Snuffleupagus is real, anything is possible.”
25 Favorite Sesame Street Memories
posted on Apr 11, 2005 - View this thread

Freedom's Defenders or Politicians' Pawns? No pretense of protecting Americans’ freedom went into the decision to enter into the Spanish-American War. It was out-and-out imperialism and nothing more. Veterans of that war may have helped to liberate Cuba , Guam , Puerto Rico , and the Philippines from Spanish rule; but those same veterans then turned around and rammed the jackboot of the U. S. military into the faces of those they had just liberated. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans and Filipinos, who had thought they were being freed only to find out they had merely exchanged one colonial master for another, were killed in their own independence-from-Uncle-Sam movements. When they finally did throw off direct U. S. rule, they were then saddled with dictators of Uncle Sam’s choosing. No credit for the defense of Americans’ freedom can be granted to veterans of this war. Compare to this: Gunning For Saddam We report, you decide indeed...
posted on Mar 6, 2005 - View this thread

The gays continue to spread their “homosexual agenda” through cartoons and children’s shows. First it was Tinky-Winky (the Gay Teletubbie), then SpongeBob SquarePants and PBS’s Buster. Last night it was The Simpsons. And now today we learn that Shrek is up to no good! What should a proper upstanding citizen do? Get me the President!
posted on Feb 21, 2005 - View this thread

In a recent broadcast on PBS archived here 4 popular bloggers, Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, and Joe Trippi had a pretty interesting session with veteran interviewer Charlie Rose. Three tiny but complete QuickTime segments...
posted on Feb 21, 2005 - View this thread

PBS in trouble? NYT link.
posted on Feb 17, 2005 - View this thread

"The nation's new education secretary denounced PBS on Tuesday for spending public money on a cartoon with lesbian [BUNNY] characters, saying many parents would not want children exposed to such lifestyles." The "Postcards from Buster" series features a peripatetic bunny, Buster, who travels the country learning about diversity. The new head of the Department of Ed has requested that PBS return the money it used to develop the show featuring the sapphic rabbits. PBS has decided not to distribute the episode to its affiliates, but WGBH has promised to make the show available to stations who want to air it.
posted on Jan 26, 2005 - View this thread

Don't miss tonight on PBS the final NOW with Bill Moyers. "Bill Moyers looks inside the right-wing media machine that the conservative NEW YORK TIMES columnist David Brooks called a "dazzlingly efficient ideology delivery system." The program examines how a vast echo chamber that is admittedly partisan and powerfully successful delivers information — and misinformation — with more regard for propaganda than fact. Founding father to the conservative movement, Richard Viguerie tells Moyers, 'That’s what journalism is, Bill. It’s all just opinion. Just opinion.'”
posted on Dec 17, 2004 - View this thread

Set your TiVos (no really, try this), mooks and midriffs, Douglas Rushkoff has a new Frontline about the "persuasion industry" coming out tomorrow night on PBS. If you caught his Merchants of Cool a couple years ago, you'll probably agree it was a breakthrough program and I hold high hopes for this year's update on how advertisers rule our world.
posted on Nov 8, 2004 - View this thread

Jim Crow Stories.
posted on Nov 6, 2004 - View this thread

Frontline: Rumsfeld's War, a PBS/Washington Post joint documentary that aired earlier this week is now online. It is the inside story of Rumsfeld's battle to assert civil control over the military.
posted on Oct 30, 2004 - View this thread

Another master taken: Richard Avedon, dead at 81. Arguably the greatest portrait photographer in history, Avedon was famous not only for his fashion or celebrity shots, but also his interest in the common man, best emphasized by the book "In the American West". He was recently working on a piece, "On Democracy" when he suffered a brain hemorrhage. Many may be familiar with his simple black & white on white style from his shots for the New Yorker (he was their first staff photographer). His site is currently shrouded in respect.
posted on Oct 1, 2004 - View this thread