America Revealed

by Carol Hohle

I’m “hooked” on PBS’s television series, America Revealed.  It deals with huge complex systems and explains them in simple terms … systems like the US food machine, transportation, energy, and manufacturing.  Hosted by Yul Kwon, a young man with amazing credentials spanning law, policy, business, and technology, Yul explains these massive overextended and due-for-replacement systems that most Americans take for granted.  Without bumming his audience out, Yul tells us how these systems came in to being – through great ingenuity and innovation – and points out the stress points where new solutions need to be found.

Some of the facts leave me dumbstruck … like … how did we get to the point where less than 2% of the population feeds the other 98%!  Or, what it takes to keep 300 million Americans moving from point A to B on an infrastructure built in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Best of all, though, this series is available anytime on the internet at http://www.pbs.org/america-revealed/.  There are only four episodes, so your viewing time commitment is less than four hours total.  But, they will be a great four hours that will leave you thinking and aware on a new level about all the creativity that has gone in to how we eat, move, see, and create goods and the opportunities that lie ahead.