As irreverent and bawdy as Aristophanes, but with more accessible humor, this pseudo-biography juxtaposes elements of Aristophanic plays with the activities of contemporaneous people to show how Aristophanes became the father of political satire and why his theatrical innovations are still staples of the contemporary theater. Aristophanes is shown as an artist living on the edge, who uses comedy to mock his enemies and wages a one-man campaign against...

Shahrazad must hold the interest of her despotic husband the sultan with nightly tales, lest she lose her life in the morning. This wellspring of storytelling, circulating from medieval Persia to Egypt to Iraq, like its wily raconteur, lives on in many modern adaptations. Art, performance, and film images are employed to show the collection's broad span of influence. Featured speakers include Marin Alsop, musical director of the Baltimore Symphony...

The city of Thebes is torn apart by the conflicting demands of reason and religion, as the disguised god Dionysus returns to his home town demanding to be worshipped. Opposing him is the young king Pentheus, who is doomed to suffer the ultimate punishment for his disbelief. Featured speakers include world-renowned playwright/author Wole Soyinka, actor Alan Cumming, and Daniel Mendelsohn of Bard College.

Henderson Forsythe, Peter Brandon, and Tim O'Conner perform poetry from the celebrated American writer Robinson Jeffers. This episode of Camera Three also includes photographs and film footage of his house in Big Sur.

What if our creations turn against us? The idea of creating life has fascinated society since the earliest days of science fiction. The first installment of the four-part series, Robots transports viewers from the first steps of Frankenstein's monster to the threat provided by the Terminator and the world of Cyberspace. From HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey to the Cylons of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica and the world of The Matrix, this is a journey...

What is the essence of Irish music? If you answered Riverdance, you need to broaden your thinking. This is a fascinating look into Irish music that explains why the art form is so central to Irish culture and identity. This program explores the history of music in Ireland, including popular instruments and various styles of dancing and singing.

This program, devoted to the 16th century, provides an introduction to the history, art, and architecture of Venice and the history of music in the city; covers Willaert and Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli at the Basilica of St. Mark; and demonstrates the extraordinary acoustics and explains their influence on the music written for performance here. Live performances in San Stefano of Gabrieli's Gloria and Schutz madrigals in a palace on the Grand Canal....

The Mayan book of creation, the dawn of life, and the glories of gods and kings. This magnificent epic was saved from destruction at the hands of the Spanish by Quiché chroniclers. Once repressed, the story is now interwoven with the history of today's Mayan people. Featured speakers include archaeologist Richard Hanson, humorist Mo Rocca, and Guatemalan artist Shuni Giron.

This program explores the impact the blues has had American society, culture, and the entertainment industry. Despite influencing nearly every form of American music, literature, television, film, and other art forms, its contributions often go unrecognized. Historians, performers, and artists discuss the origin of the blues and how it has evolved. Blues today only accounts for a small part of the music market, but it developed its own tourism industry...

What if we could travel not just through space, but through time itself? If you could travel through time, would you change the past or the future? What if you found it couldn't be changed? What price does the time traveler - and the people they are closest to - pay? This is a journey from H. G. Wells' The Time Machine through ideas like The Grandfather Paradox and The Butterfly Effect to the professional time traveler that is the ever popular Doctor...