This series features Emily, a dynamic, six year old host, who leads children and adults alike through a new era of discovery utilizing her unique perspective. Using this natural, unscripted format, Emily investigates the world through her own candid comments and questions engaging everyone she meets. The result is an extraordinary show that entertains and teaches.
This series features Emily, a dynamic, six year old host, who leads children and adults alike through a new era of discovery utilizing her unique perspective.
How were land-based trade routes conduits of both commerce and culture? The Eurasian Silk Roads, the trans-Saharan Gold Roads, and the Meso-American Turquoise Roads trace the transmission of commodities, religions, and diseases, as well as the movements of people.
How were water routes used as conduits of expansion and trade? The traders of the Indian Ocean, the early Mississippians, and the Norsemen carried death and disease, skills and technologies, philosophies and religion down rivers and across oceans.
How do societies assign value to land, labor, and material goods? A comparison of manorial economies in Japan and medieval Europe is contrasted with the tribute economy of the Inka, and the experience of dramatic economic change is illustrated by the commercial revolution in China.
What makes an "empire"? Through the Mongol empire, the Mali empire, and the Inka empire, this unit examines the construction of empires, their administrative structures, legitimating ideologies, and the environmental and technological conditions that shaped them.
How do religions interact, adopt new ideas, and adapt to diverse cultures? As the missionaries, pilgrims, and converts of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam moved around the world, the religions created change and were themselves changed.
How did colonialism and eventual de-colonization mutually affect the colonizer and the colonized? From Zanzibar to India, colonial and post-colonial identities are examined through clothing.
The Romans ruthlessly conquered Carthage and the rest of the Mediterranean region, but also gained the allegiance of most of the people they subdued. How? By giving them citizenship and including them in the benefits of empire, best exemplified by one of Rome’s good emperors, Hadrian.
The Minoans, a prosperous, peaceful island people in the Mediterranean region, influenced the Greeks, as seen in the Greek Minotaur and Theseus myth. Minoan art suggests a peaceful life without war, with violence sublimated in their bull-worship rituals. Females seem to have been more influential here than anywhere else in the Ancient World.
The Phoenicians did not create an empire, but several city-states such as Byblos and Carthage. They were very successful seafaring traders. Their most influential legacy is the creation of a simple alphabet for business transactions. Its structure was adopted by the Greeks, Romans, and other Western languages, including English.
In the 1960s President Lyndon Baines Johnson continued fueling the domestic agenda of his "Great Society," keeping a low profile on the Vietnam War. But the U.S. overspent and inflation bubbled over.
In 1954 relying on "automatic stabilizers," President Dwight Eisenhower withheld raising taxes in order to encourage consumer spending. In the 1960s, newly elected John F. Kennedy and economic advisor Walter Heller pushed Congress to approve a $12 billion tax cut stimulus.
The Federal Reserve was originally created in 1913 as an emergency lender to banks--a sort of bank of last resort. The Banking Act of 1935 and the Fed Accord of 1951 broadened the powers of the Fed, widening the range of options and tools it could use to manage the economy.