We Believe in Dinosaurs

Here is the link to the film We Believe in Dinosaurs.  I have not gotten around to watching it, but hope to shortly.

Nova Special: Dawn of Humanity

Nova will be airing a special tonight (9/16) on the Dawn of Humanity, focusing on the new Homo naledi finds from South Africa.  The video is also streaming on the PBS site here.  I am currently writing up a piece for BioLogos which should appear soon.  So, too, is Elizabeth Mitchell of AiG, from what I understand. 

PBS Antiques Roadshow on Scopes Trial

The Antiques Road Show on PBS has a short historical sketch on the Scopes trial, in Dayton, Tennessee.  I found that if you “Play All”, the images and text whiz past too quickly but maybe that is a browser setting.

Your Inner Fish Coming to a TV Set Near You

PBS has hopped on the bandwagon that Cosmos is on and is airing a miniseries based on Neil Shubin's great book Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body. John Easton of the University of Chicago News writes:

The three-part series, which premieres nationwide April 9, brings to life Shubin’s best-selling and highly readable 2008 book, Your Inner Fish. Chicago’s dramatic scenery is a star of the show, as are the UChicago classrooms and laboratories in which Shubin explains anatomical links between seemingly disparate relatives, including the brains of humans and sharks.

The episodes, made possible by a partnership between Shubin, Tangled Bank Productions of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Public Broadcasting Service, also follow Shubin and fossil-hunting colleagues on expeditions to the Arctic, the deserts of Ethiopia and the high plains of South Africa.

This looks very promising. I read Shubin's book and it is both informative and humorous (I laughed for ten minutes at the example of the generation of full bozos.)  If the series lives up to the book, it is something I will have my kids watch with me. Hopefully, unlike Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey—which spares no expense at pointing out how “primitive” religion is—the Neil Shubin series will be more philosophically neutral.

Jim Henson's The Dinosaur Train

The Jim Henson Company is going to be showing The Dinosaur Train on PBS Kids. According to the PR announcement on PR Newswire:

DINOSAUR TRAIN is seen through the eyes of Buddy, a preschool-aged Tyrannosaurus Rex. Buddy and his adoptive family of Pteranodons go for adventures on the Dinosaur Train to meet all kinds of dinosaurs in different eras and learn fascinating new facts about these incredible creatures.

"Based on input from paleontologists, science educators and early childhood education experts, DINOSAUR TRAIN has developed an ambitious and creative curriculum that harnesses children's enthusiasm for and curiosity about dinosaurs, sparking children's interest in life science and natural history," states Henson. "PBS KIDS has been an incredible partner with our current series SID THE SCIENCE KID, and our new project DINOSAUR TRAIN extends our mutual vision of creating quality, educational preschool programming by encouraging even more young viewers to get excited about science and the role it plays in our lives every day."

Keep your ears on the third rail for this one. It sounds like a winner. Of course, if I show this to my kids and then they go back to school and get...well, we will cross that bridge when we get to it.