(0)
(0)
(0)
(0)
(0)Alan Alda
Author
Description
One of America's most recognizable and acclaimed actors, the only person to ever win Emmys for acting, writing, and directing, Alda has written a memoir as elegant, funny, and affecting as his greatest performances. The son of a popular actor and a loving but mentally ill mother, he spent his early childhood backstage in the erotic and comic world of burlesque and went on, after early struggles, to achieve extraordinary success in his profession....
3) Worried Sick
Description
Stress is the curse of modern living-but is it actually so new? Whether it's the panic that sets in before public speaking or the butterflies brought on by sitting down in a dentist's chair, everyone has experienced the age-old fight-or-flight response that once helped humankind evade predators. In this classic program from the Scientific American Frontiers series, host Alan Alda meets researchers who are exploring the long-term ill effects of stress...
Description
Hydrogen may be the fuel of the future, but what would it take to safely and efficiently make the transition from fossil fuels? In this program from the Scientific American Frontiers series, host Alan Alda takes a look at two ways to use the Sun's energy to extract hydrogen; meets with Stan and Iris Ovshinsky, inventors of a hydrogen storage method involving a solid metal alloy; and makes a visit to Iceland, the country farthest along in abandoning...
Description
It has finally been acknowledged that the placebo effect-historically seen as a distraction from "real" medical treatment-is a genuine phenomenon and a potential addition to the arsenal of modern medicine. In this classic program from the Scientific American Frontiers series, host Alan Alda discovers that the roots of the placebo effect go back to the days of herbal remedies, that placebos can cause measurable changes in the brains of patients with...
Description
Until very recently the vast area under the world's ocean surfaces was virtually unknown and unreachable by humans. However, groundbreaking technologies and cutting edge research have opened the doors to the deepest and most well-kept secrets of the sea. In Beneath the Sea, a part of the PBS Scientific American Frontier series, viewers will take stock in the big unknowns of the sea and see how modern scientists are exploring life in the undersea world...
7) Don't Forget
Description
In this episode of Scientific American Frontiers, host Alan Alda investigates how people create memories and how, as we age, the act of remembering becomes slippery and elusive-sometimes vanishing forever, either because of Alzheimer's disease or as a result of other neurological disorders. Alda visits two men who live entirely in the present or the distant past, unable to recall events that happened even a few minutes ago. He also meets a volunteer...
Description
If a solution to America's obesity problem is found, it will likely draw upon not only clinical factors but also social, cultural, and psychological considerations. In this classic episode of Scientific American Frontiers, host Alan Alda talks with Dr. George Blackburn of Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to explore society's obsession with diets that promise quick, painless results. Alda also visits Arizona's Pima and Tohono O'odham Indians,...
9) Bionic Body
Description
Could lab-grown organs and body parts one day become a common solution for eliminating disease and rejuvenating the body? This classic episode of Scientific American Frontiers examines methods for re-engineering human anatomy, including not only artificial organ cultivation and retinal implants but also advances in nerve regeneration to treat spinal cord injuries. Host Alan Alda looks at nerve stimulation in paralysis victims using implanted electrodes....
10) Forever wild?
Description
For nearly 10,000 years, the Earth's wild places have been replaced by agricultural landscapes--an occurrence that has left a single question in its wake: where are the wild things? In Forever Wild, a part of the PBS Scientific Frontiers series, host Alan Alda goes behind the scenes with forest and wild life advocates as they examine the questions brought about by a domesticated world: what does it take to make wild places "work"? Can a South African...
Description
Sometime in the 1940s a brown tree snake hitched a ride aboard a U.S. Air Force plane in New Guinea traveling across the Pacific to the island of Guam. As a result, Guam lost all its native bird life. More recently, an African fungus crossed the Atlantic to cause a damaging disease in Caribbean coral, and the European gypsy moth has been steadily transforming America's forests. However, these occurrences are far from unique and are in fact becoming...
12) Body Building
Description
Will replacing a body part be as easy as replacing a light bulb some day? In Body Building, a part of the PBS Scientific American Frontiers series, host Alan Alda journeys behind the scenes with MIT's Robert Langer for a remarkable window into the current scientific advances in repair and replacement of damaged human body parts. The program follows scientists and researchers as they experiment with the growth of liver, heart, and eye tissue and reveal...
Description
At one time, experts agreed that the first Americans walked across the Bering land bridge from Asia approximately 12,000 years ago, eventually colonizing all of North and South America. But exciting recent finds on both continents have triggered entirely new theories. In Coming to America, a part of the PBS Scientific American Frontiers series, host Alan Alda heads back to the past by exploring ancient finds alongside archeologists, like the Arlington...
Description
Matthew Modine stars in HBO Pictures' AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, the dramatization of Randy Shilts' best seller chronicling the early years of the AIDS epidemic, when a handful of individuals fought indifference, prejudice, ignorance and politics to battle a deadly epidemic that would soon change the face of the world. Also featured in the all-star cast, in alphabetical order, are: Alan Alda, Phil Collins, David Dukes, Richard Gere, Glenne Headly, Anjelica...
15) Pieces of mind
Description
Weighing just a few pounds, the brain is responsible for the body's complete function. Aiming for insights into his own brain, host Alan Alda talks with scientists studying how the brain dreams, stores memories, and sorts language in this classic program from the Scientific American Frontiers series. Mike Gazzaniga, one of the world's leading brain scientists; Jim McGaugh, of the University of California, Irvine; noted memory researcher Dan Schacter;...
Description
Scientists are making impressive inroads into the neurology of conscious thought and the mental processes that help make up our unique identities. This episode of Scientific American Frontiers studies the brain's frontal lobe-the seat of personality and the chief determinant of what we do every waking second of the day. The program reconstructs a 150-year-old accident that caused railroad worker Phineas Gage to lose his sense of self; examines the...
17) Beyond science?
Description
What is science fact and what is science fiction? Beyond Science, a part of the PBS Scientific American Frontiers series, explores the topics that go beyond the realm of science: the phenomenon that are nearly impossible to examine in a rigorous scientific way. A provocative behind-the-scenes look at scientific exploration, this program presents top scientists expressing their thoughts on the importance of a scientific method of research as well as...
19) The aviator
Description
Howard Hughes was a rich young man from Texas, heir to his father's fortune, when he decided he wanted to make movies. Age 21, he made the most expensive Hollywood film ever (at the time); and went on to break air-speed records, make another fortune in aircraft design, smash Charles Lindbergh's round-the-world flight record, and be romantically linked with almost all of Hollywood's famous beauties. Nevertheless, he died alone, sealed into a room he...
20) Bridge of Spies
Description
James Donovan is a Brooklyn lawyer who finds himself thrust into the center of the Cold War when the CIA sends him on the near-impossible task to negotiate the release of a captured American U-2 pilot.