Cooking legend and cultural icon Julia Child, along with her pioneering public television series, The French Chef, introduced French cuisine to American kitchens. In her passionate and sometimes breathless way, Julia forever changed the way we cook, eat, and think about food. Now chefs of all ages and abilities can share Julia’s love of fine French food and learn to cook some of her most-loved dishes with this special collection of 18 episodes from her original 1960s series, The French Chef. Bon appetit! (7:20 hrs on 3 DVDs)
Languages: English
-
They Made America – DVD
From the introduction of the steamboat to the advent of on-line shopping, Americans have always been endlessly inventive and eminently practical. They Made America examines innovation in America through the stories of the resourceful men and women whose ideas and inventions have transformed the world. Based on author and journalist Harold Evans’s book, They Made America also explores the political, social, economic, and environmental forces that make the United States an incubator for so much radical and far-reaching creativity. (4 hrs on 2 DVDs)
-
More Yoga for the Rest of Us with Peggy Cappy
Join Peggy and her friends of all ages as they expand their yoga repertoire and increase balance, flexibility, and energy! More Yoga for the Rest of Us is presented in three easy-to-do segments: Part One gives your body a wonderful stretch-benefiting legs, hips, and the back; Part Two is a series of standing poses that increases all-important leg strength and balance; Part Three is a new and different guided relaxation exercise that conveys an integral part of yoga’s benefits: reducing stress and quieting the mind. This yoga program can be done with, or without, the aid of a chair — giving flexibility to the exercises as well as to the student. There’s something here for everyone.
-
NOVA: Ancient Computers
An unpromising lump of metal found in a 2,000-year-old shipwreck turns out to be an extraordinary treasure: the world’s first computer. NOVA follows the ingenious detective work that painstakingly discovered the truth about the ancient Greek device: it was an astonishingly sophisticated astronomical calculator and eclipse predictor, unrivaled until the era of modern science and believed to be from the workshop of Archimedes.
-
NOVA: Building Pharaoh’s Chariot
Around 3,600 years ago, reliefs in Egyptian tombs and temples depict pharaohs and warriors proudly riding into battle on horse-drawn chariots. Some historians claim that the chariot launched a technological and strategic revolution, and was the secret weapon behind Egypt’s greatest era of conquest known as the New Kingdom. But was the Egyptian chariot really a revolutionary design? How decisive a role did it play in the bloody battles of the ancient world? In Building Pharaoh’s Chariot, a team of archaeologists, engineers, woodworkers, and horse trainers join forces to build and test two highly accurate replicas of Egyptian royal chariots. They discover astonishingly advanced features, including spoked wheels, springs, shock absorbers, anti-roll bars, and even a convex shaped rear mirror, leading one of them to compare the level of design to the engineering standards of 1930’s-era Buicks! By driving the pair of replicas to their limits in the desert outside Cairo, NOVA’s experts test the claim that the chariot marks a crucial turning point in ancient military history.
-
NOVA: Who Killed Lindbergh’s Baby
In the aftermath of his 1927 solo transatlantic flight, Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh-Lucky Lindy-became the most famous human being on earth. But on the evening of March 1, 1932 Lucky Lindy’s luck ran out. Bold kidnappers snatched his baby son, Charlie, from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey while everyone in the house was awake. Negotiations with the kidnappers stretched out for weeks, but little Charlie never came back. His body was discovered not five miles from Hopewell. A German immigrant, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, was executed for the crime. But was he really guilty? And could there be other kidnappers that were never caught?
-
Earth from Space
Earth From Space is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. Produced in extensive consultation with NASA scientists, NOVA takes data from earth-observing satellites and transforms it into dazzling visual sequences, each one exposing the intricate and surprising web of forces that sustains life on earth. Witness how dust blown from the Sahara fertilizes the Amazon; how a vast submarine “waterfall” off Antarctica helps drive ocean currents around the world; and how the sun’s heating up of the southern Atlantic gives birth to a colossally powerful hurricane. From the microscopic world of water molecules vaporizing over the ocean to the magnetic field that is bigger than Earth itself, Earth From Space reveals the astonishing beauty and complexity of our dynamic planet.
-
Mind of a Rampage Killer
What makes a person walk into a theater, church, or classroom and open fire? What combination of circumstances compels a human being to commit the most inhuman of crimes? As the nation tries to comprehend the tragic events in Newtown, Connecticut, NOVA correspondent Miles O’Brien investigates theories that many rampage killers are driven most of all by the wish to die, not the urge to kill. Could suicide-and the desire to go out in a media-fueled blaze of glory-be their main motivation? How much can science tell us about a brain at risk for violence? Most important, can we recognize dangerous minds in time to stop the next Newtown?
-
NOVA scienceNOW: How Does the Brain Work?
Host Neil deGrasse Tyson will tackle one of science’s major challenges in each episode, framed as a simple question that ordinary people wonder and worry about. Neil will guide us as he explores dramatic discoveries and the frontiers of research that connect each central, provocative mystery. Episode includes: 1) Magic and the Brain – Neuroscientists join Penn and Teller to explore why humans are so easily fooled by magic tricks. 2) Can Machines Think Like Us? – A computer named Watson is the latest contestant in machine v. human battles of the “mind.” 3) Magnetic Mind Control – Using magnetic wands, researchers can control the brain functions of human subjects. Sound scary? 4) Profile: David Eagleman – A neuroscientist finds inventive ways to study the brain-like sending test subjects into a terror-inducing free-fall.
-
Longest Hatred
“They are the other. They are not us.” Throughout time, words such as these have been used to justify and vilify. This stunning documentary takes an unsparing look at the ways such words have shaped the experience of Jewish people, from the first century to the present. In part one, “From the Cross to the Swastika,” traces an image that begins with the earliest writing of Christianity. In part two, “Enemies of the People,” shows how anti-Semitic sentiment has accompanied a growing nationalism in Europe in recent decades. Part three, Between Moses and Muhammed, takes a humanistic look at relations between Arabs and Israelis, once linked by pseudo-science under the degrading label ”Semite,” and now enmeshed in one of the world’s most violent conflicts. (2.5 hrs. on 2 cassettes)