What’s cooking? Plenty with the PBS Distribution release of the first season of The Mind of a Chef. From ramen to rotting bananas, Copenhagen to Kansas City, and pork buns to golf clubs, this new program combines travel, cooking, history, science and humor into an unforgettable journey. Join executive producer and narrator Anthony Bourdain as he takes viewers inside the mind of noted Korean-American chef and restaurateur David Chang.
The Mind of a Chef is a reinvention of a travel-cooking show,” says Bourdain. “This season we go inside the kitchen, the world and the mind of Chef David Chang. This show is a chance to explore that mind in all its tangled glory.”
Over the course of 16 episodes, the season examines the food-centric world of Chef Chang, a man who’s enjoying an incredible run in the culinary world. Named by Time as one of the world’s “100 most influential people,” Chang is the creative force behind New York City’s wildly popular Momofuku restaurants. Along the way, he’s racked up just about every major cooking award. Whether cooking in his kitchens in New York and Australia or traveling for inspiration to Japan, Denmark, Spain or Montreal, Chang brings a voracious appetite for food knowledge and a youthful exuberance to cooking and travel.
In the series premiere, Chang dissects the roots of his passion for ramen dishes and tsukemen on a trip to Japan. Learn the history of this famous noodle as David visits a ramen factory, has a bowl of the original tsukemen and examines how alkalinity makes noodles chewier and less prone to dissolving in broth. Other season highlights include traveling to Montreal with comedian Aziz Ansari of NBC’s Parks and Recreation, visiting one of the world’s top chefs, Rene Redzepi, and We’re ready for seconds.
It’s a documentary that brims with excitement starting at the ground floor.
PBS Distribution’s John Portman: A Life of Building showcases the life and career of the man once considered a maverick for challenging industry standards–a pro who was shunned by the American Institute of Architects. Yet today, John Portman is now recognized as one of the most innovative and imitated architects of his time. Two-time Emmy-winning producer Ben Loeterman captures Portman’s philosophy, entrepreneurial spirit, and bold approach in this captivating program.
With the Atlanta Hyatt Regency in 1967, Portman defied expectations and won international acclaim for his daring 22-story atrium. Portman’s iconic urban statements and eye-popping interiors have since graced 60 cities across four continents, redefining cityscapes such as Times Square in New York, Embarcadero Center in San Francisco, and skylines in Shanghai and Beijing. Best known for his urban mixed-use complexes, Portman’s designs reveal a deep understanding of people and our response to space.
Have you ever wondered what’s going on inside an animal’s head? How does an animal see the world–and us? Is your dog really feeling guilty when it gives you that famous “guilty look?” Do pigeon brains possess “superpowers” that allow them to find their way home across hundreds of unfamiliar miles? Is it possible that swarms of bees communicate in patterns similar to human brain cells? Join host David Pogue as he endeavors to learn more about the minds’ of animals in NOVA scienceNOW: What are Animals Thinking?” (PBS Distribution).
This episode of NOVA scienceNOW features the four intriguing stories detailed below:
DO ANIMALS KNOW RIGHT FROM WRONG?
Do dogs feel guilty? Can rats feel empathy? We project very complex–and very human–emotional lives onto our animal companions. Now, scientists studying animal cognition are finally revealing the machinery of animals’ moral compasses.
PIGEON GPS
We know that homing pigeons can find their way back to their lofts over hundreds of miles of unfamiliar terrain. What we don’t know is how they do it. David Pogue races against some of the best navigators in the animal kingdom, while exploring competing theories on how pigeons see, hear, and feel the landscape below them.
HIVE GENIUS
What do bees and fish have in common with the human brain? Members of these communities aren’t very smart on their own, but when they come together they’re capable of remarkable things. We will investigate the inner workings of communication patterns within a giant bee colony.
PROFILE: LAURIE SANTOS
Yale scientist Laurie Santos is studying a community of more than 900 monkeys who live in a society that is eerily similar to our own. Can Santos’ research reveal the evolutionary roots of human foibles?
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