Results tagged “pbs”

Last year at this time, we were spouting off about KCTS running, for a fundraiser, Dr. Daniel G. Amen's "self-produced show, 'Change Your Brain, Change Your Life.'" Charitably, Amen's claims were not always fully supported by conventional medical wisdom, and we wondered at PBS being wiling to do real damage to its brand for the sake of gulling aging baby-boomers with promises of eternal middle age.

With swine flu defeated, it’s time to turn our attention to the killer bear loose on our streets.

We just got this email from KCTS inviting us to stop in next Saturday, January 10, for a 3 p.m. sneak preview screening and discussion with Rick Steves about his new travel special, Rick Steves' Iran: Yesterday and Today.

We're not afraid to admit it, we kinda have a thing for Rick Steves. Steves has gone beyond local travel guru and bespectacled PBS travel host to become an outspoken advocate against the criminalization of marijuana and the U.S.'s "War on Drugs." He has done so while still coming across as sensible and trustworthy. Steves is the antithesis of every stoner stereotype in mainstream culture, but much more like the responsible adults we know that choose to smoke a bowl in their free time.

Last night we flipped on the tee-vee, and stumbled on a KCTS fundraiser: Dr. Daniel G. Amen in his self-produced show, "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life." If you missed it, you're in luck: it's showing fifteen more times locally.

Is February Jane Austen month? PBS has turned every Sunday evening into a Jane celebration (see the KCTS Jane Austen blog for the definition of overkill), but if you want to experience Jane Austen the way she meant to be experienced (if you get our drift) and are too lazy to read a book, then Book-It's Persuasion is all you, baby.

George Porter (of The Meters) and his band, Porter Batiste Stoltz, are descending upon Fremont's Nectar Lounge tonight, providing you with the opportunity to experience legendary New Orleans dirty funk right here in Seattle. Porter was the bass player for the original Meters back in the '60s and '70s. Russell Batiste, Jr., and Brian Stoltz jumped on the funk train with Porter in The Meters' late '80s reincarnation--the Funky Meters. George Porter, Jr.'s, bass is sexy as hell; have you "Cissy Strut"?

Seattlest mentioned in one of our posts about Rick Steves' Town Hall appearance two weeks ago that a friend of ours was racing through Europe with Rick's tour company at the time. Meanwhile, the "Rick Steves' Politics Through the Backdoor with Rick Steves" thing at Town Hall was great (actual title: "Travel as a Political Act"), but we wondered who, exactly, he thought he was converting with it. Rick's a liberal, he was in front of a liberal crowd at Town Hall and, we assumed, his tour groups were made up of similar liberals who were looking to sample some foreign culture and maybe pat themselves on the back a little for their openness to wacky Euro ideas, but weren't necessarily in need of a high colonic to their red white and blue lower intestines.

The post we wrote yesterday about Rick Steves ("Rick Steves. The man lives in a pleasant world.") seems reasonable if you only know the man through his travel shows on PBS. He was on the Town Hall stage for all of about four seconds last night before destroying that illusion. Actually, he lives in a few different worlds; one here, in Edmonds, Washington, U.S.A., and another in Europe where he spends a third of every year, and the conflict between those two equal something other than "pleasant." Steve was pissed last night during his "Travel as a Political Act" talk. It was an angry, wrathful travel guru working the microphone--A much different animal than the "This is reeeealy great" PBS guy in sensible shoes.

Rick Steves. The man lives in a pleasant world. The voice, the haircut, the folksy European dinners with friends one after another after the other. Just once we want to flip to PBS in time to see Steves in Friedrichstraße going berserk on a ticketing agent, but it won't happen because the world is his oyster. A friend of Seattlest's is currently on a 5-week Rick Steves tour of Europe, which we love telling people because it invariably inspires good feelings. Really, any situation can be dealt with by referencing Rick Steves. "Hey, get your arm out of my car, gringo!" "My friend is in Italy right now with Rick Steves!" We all want to live like Rick. In fact we've paid him a ton of money to teach us how to live like him. Furthermore, he's a good ambassador. He's not loud, rude or otherwise obnoxious. He's not going to go berserk in a train station or turn up on the news in relation to some bizarre hooker-stabbing incident. Further-furthermore, he just seems like a genuinely good guy. The man lives in a pleasant world, and wouldn't it be nice to inhabit it for a while?

Striking out on one's own and carving a living from the breast of the land was once the mark of an American hero. The colonists, the homesteaders, the gold rushers, even, are mythological giants without which our country would have no identity, no past. Our city in particular was an outpost of these kinds of guys, scratching sustenance from a far and isolated territory.

Two weeks ago we were watching American Experience: Influenza 1918 on PBS, because something else was a repeat. So we were reminded that between spring of 1918 and the end of that year, 675,000 Americans died of the flu -- 20 million worldwide-- and no one still knows why, precisely. (In fact, about 36,000 Americans die of the flu annually.)

AUTHOR, AUTHOR: Barbara Ehrenreich talks about her book Dancing in the Streets, in which she explores the desire for collective joy (see photo), historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing.

>>>UW iSchool at Kane Hall, 7:00-9:00pm. "Voices in an Empty Room: Five Apologies for the Narrative": Children's author Richard Peck discusses his writing and teaching careers, and his experiences with the kids today. He'll read from On The Wings Of Heroes, his new novel about a World War II childhood. Free with RSVP. Kane Hall, Rm. 220.

>>>UW Forum for Science and Ethics Policy, 5:30pm. Dr. Dennis Schatz, VP for Education at the Pacific Science Center, cheerleads for “Making Science as Pervasive as Sports in Society.” His ulterior motive? It can only be to pack the Sonics off to Oklahoma and build our very own Exploratorium right here in Seattle, to which we say “Be Aggressive, Be Be Aggressive!” Free. UW Health Sciences Building, T-478.

Town Hall - All the Thrill of Cable Access, Live! (TM). In Seattle, this is actually a draw. Maybe it's also due to their PBS-minded Upstairs Downstairs set-up.

SFist commeters pose for before and aftershocks when the mayor commemorates a 1906 earthquake...at 4:30 in the morning. A hot tip on the Chronicle vending machines comes in and the SFist war correspondent risks life and limb to post this dispatch from the frontlines.

next great American chef."

Continuing Seattlest's new feature, Downer Friday: Sites around the world have been commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a place Seattlest has personally visited and personally been marked forever by.