Summary: Situated in America's heartland among acres of Indiana cornfields, Wabash Valley Correctional Facility houses not just the state's most violent offenders but also a large population of the mentally ill. This MSNBC documentary looks at the challenges of confining thousands of hardened criminals in addition to those with deep-seated psychiatric needs. Wabash psychiatrist Dr. Mary Ruth Sims...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: In this program, George Lauder, of Harvard University, and Terri Williams, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, investigate the anatomical and physiological challenges faced by bluegill sunfish, bottlenose dolphins, sharks, salmon, and sperm whales to reduce drag and control buoyancy. Information on the optimal body shapes for reef-dwellers and open-ocean swimmers, the locomotive...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Part 2 - The dirt on hotels: Marketplace's investigation of hotel cleanliness got Canada talking last week. Now, we're digging deeper, testing how well chains are maintaining their hotels. We reveal some of the most surprising results yet, and what the companies could be doing to clean up their act and protect their guests.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2012
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Summary: Part 1 - The dirt on hotels: Marketplace puts six of the largest hotel chains in Canada to the test. Marketplace is investigating the cleanliness of Canadian hotels in the most comprehensive test of its kind, ever. This month, we'll reveal the risks you don't see and what you can do about them.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2012
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Summary: New York City spends
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Proving that female prisoners struggle with the same conditions male convicts face, this MSNBC documentary goes inside a North Carolina facility filled with 1,100 troubled mothers, sisters, aunts, and even grandmothers. Warden Annie Harvey conveys the goals and frustrations of her job, while male officers acknowledge an ongoing challenge to maintain professionalism and objectivity. Although...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: After an intriguing look at tree-dwelling animals that glide, this program studies teals, ducks, geese, swans, eagles, vultures, gannets, owls, and hawks to explore three major concerns of avian flight: the muscle-to-mass limits of getting airborne, the energy costs of staying aloft, and the ways in which flight performance shapes behavior. Body architecture, wing and tail dynamics, formation...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Since movement burns precious energy, it makes sense that animals would want to move as efficiently as possible. What factors influence animals' gaits? This program studies horses, cheetahs, elephants, bonobos, and kangaroos to find out. Commentary by land animal locomotion specialists Don Hoyt, Vaughan Langman, Peter Aerts, and Russ Baudinette offers insights into the mechanics of running and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Mary Peplow and Debra Shipley write guidebooks. In this program, they describe different ways in which they accumulate information for their projects and how they select from their research, edit, and shape it. The program is based on their writing for London: The Good Tour Guide, and focuses in detail on the research, collection, and writing up of information for a tour around a Ford...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: In this program, Dr. Jonathan Miller investigates both the predictable and the unexpected effects of damage to Broca's and Wernicke's areas on patients' abilities to communicate verbally and through sign language. In his efforts to expose the physiological roots of language expression, Dr. Miller traces the evolution of brain research, from the scientific blind alley of phrenology to the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: It is one of the largest women's prisons in the world, full of murderers, violent criminals, and drug dealers-but many at Valley State Prison are hoping to turn their lives around. Recorded at the jail in 2000 and again five years later, this MSNBC documentary profiles three women who contemplate the severity of their crimes-ranging from manslaughter to murder-and their chances for emotional...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: On an island adjacent to the Bronx sits one of America's most notorious jail systems, known for much of the past century as a place of inmate-on-inmate cruelty. But violence has decreased by 90 percent at Rikers since 1999. This MSNBC documentary examines Rikers then and now, spotlighting the measures that have reduced conflict among a population of 15,000 offenders. New York City Department of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program, the widely-respected press and television journalist John Pilger introduces ideas about reporting. He describes his basic training, and some of the editorial constraints on his writing. He advocates principles of simplicity, truthfulness, meticulous checking of facts, and steadfastness in the face of powerful censors. He gives examples of brave reporting by V. H. Russell (of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Since New York City enacted its zero-tolerance drug policy in the early 1990s, arrests for narcotics violations have increased over 40 percent. This program goes on the streets where the policy is enforced, taking a gritty look at narcotics stake-outs and arrest procedures. Cameras follow the real-life beats of Detective Danny Murphy and Sergeant Vincent Curulli in Brooklyn, Detective Larry...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: When someone is in trouble, they call the police; when the police are in trouble, they call ESU. This program travels with the highly trained, heavily armed officers of the NYPD's Emergency Services Unit who specialize in forced entries, raids, and situations where the violence or potential for extreme violence are more than ordinary police are prepared to handle. Cameras capture ongoing...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Jaci Stephen is the television reviewer of the Evening Standard. She moves through the world of television in numerous ways-at launches and previews, inside television companies, and sitting at home watching programs. She describes how she goes about writing, the problems posed by different genres, and the restrictions placed upon her writing by the nature of her audience-the readers of a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Karin Muller is an American on a quest to understand other cultures. This program follows her as she begins her journey of discovery along the route of the ancient Incan highway through South America. In Ecuador, she endures tear gas during a labor riot and witnesses backbreaking toil in a crude, antiquated gold mine. On the disputed border between Ecuador and Peru, she watches ordnance troops...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: From medicinal shamans to taxi drivers in rusty death traps, this program plunges further into the depth and breadth of life in South America-following American adventurer Karin Muller as she travels the ancient Incan highway. Muller joins Peruvian fishermen plying their trade in handmade reed boats; watches herds of vicuna penned and sheared of their precious wool; absorbs the spectacle of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: By its nature the work is grisly, but a successful homicide investigation can at least give survivors the consolation of justice. In an ongoing case and in a notorious one that was closed, this program shows how killers are caught by NYPD homicide experts. Veteran Detective Robert Mooney discusses his methods, including forensics and what he calls "victimology," the background checks that often...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: We do not cure anybody, the director of Atascadero State Hospital's Sexually Violent Predator unit frankly admits. Nevertheless, many in the criminal justice community admire Atascadero's relentless efforts to treat the criminally insane. This MSNBC documentary provides an inside look at the facility, which houses several types of offender-from MDOs, or the mentally disordered, to frighteningly...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: You like horror movies? responds a Folsom State Prison inmate when asked to describe life in the penitentiary. "This is a horror movie." Virtually every inmate who appears in this MSNBC documentary-and perhaps a few of Folsom's guards-seems to share his opinion. Viewers are guided through the prison's antiquated infrastructure, from the general population areas to the dungeon-like Cell Block 5,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: Ex-Monty Python member Terry Jones writes a weekly piece for the "Input" column of the Young Guardian, in which he argues a case for something he feels strongly about. Terry describes how he gets ideas and goes about the process of research and writing. Terry illustrates how he tries to find an unusual angle to writing an argument and compares different approaches.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: The essence of poetry, metaphors unite disparate objects and ideas, resulting in a new perception of reality. In this program, contemporary Mexican poets Alberto Blanco, Luis Cortes Bargallo, and Jose Luis Rivas discuss the creation and use of the metaphor in their own poetry and in the poetic traditions of their homeland. Stunning visuals and computer graphics accompanying the poets' readings...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Every year, Western Michigan University conducts an archaeological field school at the site of Fort St. Joseph in Niles, Michigan. Students absorb proper field techniques in a multidisciplinary program of community service learning-researching the social, economic, and political atmosphere of the colonial-era fur trade and disseminating that information to the community. This program documents...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009