Journey of the Universe

Wine is confusing…overwhelming even. So where do you start if you want to learn more about it? Join John Cleese on an entertaining and personal look at the world of winemaking and discover: how to find wines that taste good to you, how to make sure you get the best value and how to keep and serve wine at home.

Carl Sagan covers a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe.

This documentary follows seven wine-making families in the Burgundy region of France, delving into the cultural and creative process of making wine. You'll never look at wine the same way again.

With renowned wine importer Martine Saunier as our guide, we journey into Portugal's spectacular Douro Valley to explore the mystery and complexity of the world of port

The exploding cork. Endless tiny bubbles floating up and up in the glass. An indulgence. A celebration. A seduction. A triumph. This is the essence of Champagne, isn’t it? But it’s not just bubbles in a glass that makes the wine, or the mystique. Only sparkling wine produced within the boundaries of the Champagne region is truly “Champagne.” At first glance, the region is not an obvious source of romance. Champagne’s history is grim and bloody, swept by war and destruction from Attila the Hun to the filthy trenches of WWI and the Nazi depredations of WWII. The environment for winemaking is desperately hard — northerly latitude, chalky soil, copious rain, frost, rot. Yet it’s these difficulties that help make the wine unique.

Examining Mahler's creative flowering, from the 1890's to his untimely death at the age of 51, in 1911, including Symphonies 5 through 10, the Rückert songs and the "Song of the Earth". The episode also charts Mahler's mercurial career as a conductor, from the Vienna Opera (some called it the most prestigious music job in the world) to Carnegie Hall in New York, as well as his tempestuous relationship with his wife Alma. At Mahler's simple grave in Vienna's Grinzing cemetery, MTT explains why Mahler has so profoundly affected his own life.

How can marks on a 150‐year‐old page transform into the unflinching emotion of Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony? From decoding the score, to uncovering Tchaikovsky's history, Michael Tilson Thomas gives us a backstage pass to the making of a performance.

Focusing on Mahler's birth, conflicted childhood and early influences in the backwoods of Bohemia, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, through his student days in Vienna and early song-writing to his emerging triumph as a conductor in concert halls all over Europe. The premiere of his own First Symphony in Budapest in 1888 shocked the contemporary audience, but this ground-breaking work, Tilson Thomas explains, contains many of the seeds of everything else that Mahler composed.

Shostakovich may have secreted a subversive cipher beneath the surface of his life-saving Symphony No. 5. This is all the more shocking since another bad review from Stalin’s totalitarian forces could have meant a sentence to the Gulag or worse.... When he penned this fifth symphony, the composer was literally writing for his life. The risk was so high that Shostakovich slept on the stairs outside his apartment so the secret police would not wake his family when they came from him, as he was sure they would. This Keeping Score episode, investigates the arresting symphony that would either redeem Shostakovich or doom him. Did he dare hide a kernel of musical criticism in what appears to be a paean to the Motherland? Join Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony as they explore the hidden language of this masterwork. Episode includes full-length concert performance of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in D minor by the San Francisco Symphony.