Students of evolution understand that when our ancient African ancestors lost their body hair and ventured out onto the hot savannah, their skin became dark to protect against UV radiation, while subsequent migration away from the equator yielded paler people. But in 2000, Penn State University anthropologist Nina Jablonski proposed a startling new theory as to why human pigmentation is so diverse. In this program, Jablonski suggests that skin color...

Three case studies in Europe, Africa and Latin America show how descriptions help us understand a place. Students see how descriptive information may be based on landforms of a region, such as mountains, deserts or sea coasts. They also see how they can learn about a place by focusing on living patterns of a region - its political and economic systems, languages and religions. Exquisite videography takes viewers to West African rain forests, Alpine...

Not so long ago, countries like Mexico, India, and China counted malnutrition as a major health concern. Today, hundreds of millions of people in these countries are coping with obesity and its associated diseases, growing fatter, and at a faster rate, than Americans. This program explores the shocking explosion of global obesity and examines its links to increasing wealth and changing diets. The video travels to Mexico, where two-thirds of the population...

With 10,000 children born per hour, 80 million per year, the human population of the Earth surpassed the 6 billion mark in 1999. As resources of every kind get spread thinner and thinner, how will the impoverished peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America survive? And how much longer will it be before their urgent plight devastates Western society? This program thoroughly addresses the grim realities of life in third-world nations while providing...

Jews wishing to escape persecution in Nazi Germany had limited choices as to where they might relocate. One city that would accept immigrants without a visa was Shanghai, where nearly 20,000 refugees eventually fled. Arriving there with nothing, most spent a hard, hungry, disease-ridden time in camps acclimating to their new environment, but the Jewish district in Shanghai eventually grew into a cosmopolitan center replete with Western-style bakeries,...

This program examines types of conflict that can occur at the local level, whether that locality is a single town, a region, or an entire country. After generally addressing armed conflict-different types of war, where they tend to proliferate, and kinds of weaponry used-Conflict on a Local Scale illustrates unarmed conflict through five examples. They include a clash of recreational interests in Britain's Lake District; in Cambodia, the forced eviction...

China's global influence has grown enormously since the turn of the new century. Now the second-largest economy in the world, its citizens are buying up consumer goods both domestically and from abroad in record numbers. In this collection of 12 ABC News segments, anchor Diane Sawyer travels from Beijing to Shanghai exploring life in the Asian nation and the part the U.S. has played in shaping its economic initiatives. Clip duration ranges from 2...

The dire prediction by controversial economist Thomas Malthus that the world's expanding population would swiftly outrun its food supply has not come to fruition-yet. In this program, demographer Paul Demeny, of the Population Council; Walter Reid, of the World Resources Institute; and Max Singer, co-founder of the Hudson Institute, join Ben Wattenberg, of the American Enterprise Institute, in debating issues such as the powerful influence of technology...

The 2009 installment in Wide Angle's Time for School series reenters the lives of seven students in seven different countries, offering a glimpse of the worldwide battle to get what most American children take for granted: a basic education. These riveting case studies in India, Afghanistan, Kenya, Benin, Brazil, Japan, and Romania feature young teenagers embracing academic challenges that will, with luck and hard work, prepare them for high school....

In 2003, the Wide Angle program Time for School profiled children in seven countries-Afghanistan, Benin, Brazil, India, Japan, Kenya, and Romania-as they started their first year of school, often in the face of great adversity. Three years later this Wide Angle episode returns to visit each child, updating the progress of their educational and personal development. The similarities and contrasts that emerge among the lives of these young people provide...