Monthly Archives: October 2018

features Erik Callender, a herpetologist who has turned his lifelong fascination with reptiles into a professional teaching career. In the one-hour program, viewers see first-hand Erik’s excitement for teaching and exposing children to the wonders of science and education through his classroom visits in the U.S., where he brings along a menagerie of exotic animals, including lizards, reptiles and snakes. He also travels to the Ranomafana rainforest in Madagascar, where Callender engages with the locals, studies the animals, feeds the crocodiles, and introduces the children of two cultures to some of the most fascinating creatures on earth – as well as each other through webcasts.

Airs on WXXI-TV October 30, 2018 at 3:00 am
REQUEST THIS RECORDING

Young Men and Fire tells the story of a single wildland firefighting crew as they struggle with fear, loyalty, love and defeat all over the course of a single fire season. What emerges is a story of a small group of working-class men, their exterior world, their interior lives, and the fire that lies between.

Airs on WXXI-TV October 29, 2018 at 10:00 pm
REQUEST THIS RECORDING

Watch the trailer.

Amidst the debate over fixing the country’s ailing education system, THE GAME CHANGERS tells of a bold initiative designed to transform American classrooms. In 2009, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation launched an innovative pilot program to identify high-ability people in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math), fund their training at four universities and create new teacher-preparation programs that focus on the skills and knowledge needed in the Information Age. Each student would receive a $30,000 stipend in exchange for completing the newly created master’s degree program. Then, they would go to work in Indiana’s high-need rural and urban schools. Sixty individuals from different walks of life, from recent college graduates to career-changers, took the daunting challenge. THE GAME CHANGERS follows the Fellows for two years, from university preparation through their first year heading their own classrooms. How do the teachers fare in their new roles? Can they make the difference in the lives of students? Can they make a difference in improving American schools?

Airs on WXXI-TV October 29, 2018 at 2:00 am
REQUEST THIS RECORDING to be embedded into the Safari Montage platform.

Or watch online here.

The way children travel to school structures daily life for families around the world-but the means differs dramatically. In Japan 98 percent of children walk to school every day, unaccompanied by a parent. In the United States just 13 percent of children walk or bike to school, and most are driven to school by a parent. The Slow Way Home explores this divergence, examining how American families have largely given up on keeping our streets and public spaces safe enough for children, while Japanese communities have mobilized to keep their streets safe and walkable, not only for children but for everyone in society. Seen through both a historical and contemporary framing, The Slow Way Home is an uplifting examination of differences in culture that provides both insight into a distressing trend in American society and simultaneously offers hope for change.

Airs on WXXI-TV October 29, 2018 at 1:00 am
REQUEST THIS RECORDING

View the trailer here.

Shakespeare’s Richard III is one of the most infamous villains of all time – and one of the most relished. This episode explains how Shakespeare created both a loathsome and brilliant manipulator, as well as a real man who speaks to every age. Shakespeare’s history plays are at least as much play as history. They hinge on character, on strength and on frailty, and what humans will resort to in order to achieve power. While historians still debate the merits and vices of King Richard, there is no evidence that he was the villain Tudor historians described; indeed, his reign of only two years brought some positive changes.

Airs on WXXI-TV October 26, 2018 at 10:00 pm
REQUEST THIS RECORDING

View the trailer here.

A “winter’s tale” was Jacobean slang for something fanciful and unreal – a campfire story. Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, written during the period 1613-14, is classified as one of his late romances. This is a play driven by passion and obsession, by the uncontrollable jealousy of King Leontes, who recklessly rejects his wife’s love and accuses her of an affair with his old friend. Acting like a man possessed, he orders his friend killed and his pregnant wife imprisoned. In 17th-century marriages, even royal ones, a wife believed guilty of adultery could indeed be brutally punished. The play’s second half, something of an idyllic comedy despite the stark and brutal first half of the play, returns the people Leontes thought he lost through one of the greatest theatrical coups of all time, a magic trick that uses no magic. Beale shows that in this play, Shakespeare offers something for which everyone longs: to reverse time, to make amends for an irreversible mistake.

Airs on WXXI-TV October 26, 2018 at 9:00 pm
REQUEST THIS RECORDING

View the trailer here.

More than 200,000 Spanish-speaking people in the United States suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, that number could potentially increase to 1.3 million by 2050 – a growth rate of 600 percent. Alzheimer’s presents its own set of problems in the general population, but it seems to affect the Latino population at a higher rate. Latinos, studies suggest, possess more risk factors (diabetes, high blood pressure) for developing dementia than other groups and exhibit Alzheimer’s symptoms at an earlier age than non-Hispanics. In addition, surveys indicate Latinos’ reluctance to see doctors may result from financial and language barriers or because they mistake dementia symptoms for normal aging, thereby delaying the diagnosis. Taped in Spanish in front of an audience – and subtitled in English – COMPASSION FOR THOSE WE LOVE focuses on the human stories of the care giving crisis in a town hall-style format, hosted by Ms. Tsi-tsi-ki Felix, a Telemundo news anchor and reporter, and featuring a panel discussion and a question-and-answer session with experts. One of the Hispanic community’s strengths – the strong cultural value of family responsibility and the desire to care for elders and loved ones in the home – make the need for accurate information and access to care giving resources all the more critical. This educational program addresses these issues and others in a linguistically and culturally sensitive manner. Although geared specifically to the Hispanic community, much of the information presented is universal and applicable to most Alzheimer’s caregivers.

Airs on WXXI-TV October 25, 2018 at 4:00 am
REQUEST THIS RECORDING

Many of us assume that the world, or at least the country, is now fully connected, but throughout American classrooms, there exists a digital divide. In a shockingly large number of schools, access to technology, connectivity, and teacher-training is nonexistent. Many of those underserved schools are located just a few miles from fully equipped schools with technologically adept teachers in better funded districts. This new film from Academy Award® nominated, Primetime Emmy Award winning Director/Producer Rory Kennedy, in which we see the situation through the eyes of students, educators, and policy experts and advocates across the country, clearly lays out the steps we must take a to bring our public education system into the 21st century.

Airs on WXXI-TV October 25, 2018 at 4:00 am
REQUEST THIS RECORDING

NATIVE AMERICA is a four-part PBS series that challenges everything we thought we knew about the Americas before and since contact with Europe. It travels through 15,000-years to showcase massive cities, unique systems of science, art, and writing, and 100 million people connected by social networks and spiritual beliefs spanning two continents. The series reveals some of the most advanced cultures in human history and the Native American people who created it and whose legacy continues, unbroken, to this day. The series explores this extraordinary world through an unprecedented combination of cutting edge science and traditional indigenous knowledge. It is NATIVE AMERICA as never seen before-featuring sacred rituals filmed for the first time, history changing scientific discoveries, and rarely heard voices from the living legacy of Native American culture. NATIVE AMERICA rediscovers a past whose splendor and sophistication is only now being realized, and whose story has for too long remained untold. Emmy-award winning cinematographers and Academy Award nominated animators bring to life towering pyramids, sprawling empires, and incredible indigenous legends. NATIVE AMERICA reveals a unifying belief that inspires these diverse cultures – people are deeply connected to earth, sky, water, and all living things. This belief is rooted in millennia of living on this land and continues to resonate in the lives of Native Americans to this day.

“From Caves to Cosmos” – Combine ancient wisdom and modern science to answer a 15,000-year-old question: who were America’s First Peoples? The answer hides in Amazonian cave paintings, Mexican burial chambers, New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon and waves off California’s coast.

Airs on WXXI-TV October 23, 2018 at 9:00 pm
REQUEST THIS RECORDING

Project Shattered Silence presents a candid, in-depth look at the remarkable real-life experiences of 46 high-schoolers from the Tampa Bay area. In this insightful and uplifting stage production, the teens bare their souls, and share their intriguing, heart-wrenching stories of struggle and survival, rejection and acceptance, and ultimately, unwavering hope. With startling honesty and courage, the teenagers delve into harrowing experiences as varied as abuse, homelessness, the suicide of a parent, mental illness, self-harm, and bullying. Cameras document the process from start to finish, following the “Project: Shattered Silence” cast and their inspiring artistic director and creator, Jared O’Roark, on their 10-month journey. The rare, behind the- scenes access captures the evolution of the production over time and also reveals the amazing personal breakthroughs and transformations that take place along the way.

Airs on WXXI-TV October 22, 2018 at 1:00 am
REQUEST THIS RECORDING to be embedded into the Safari Montage platform.

Or watch online here: