Better Baby Institute
The Better Baby Institute of Philadelphia looks like a college campus. Ivy on the walls. Faculty in the halls. Walk by an open door, you hear violins and Japanese. It’s a college all right, but the average student is less than six years old. Glenn Doman, the director says, “Tiny children are starved for information. They have a rage to learn. And they understand superbly.”
Found Art
Think of what you drive by every day and don’t see. Douglas Geiss notices more than most. He and his cousins live in a five acre forest filled with wonder. They found a mermaid riding a yellow submarine. And a fish made out of pick axes. Created by their grandfather, Nate Nichols, a farmer who also planted art. Nate would weld together whatever he saw in worn out tools. None of them made him much money, so every day for 25 years, he hid them in his woods.
“Everybody else looks up in the clouds and says, ‘Oh, that cloud looks like a dragon,’ Nate’s son Josh said. “My dad looked down at the ground and said, ‘That wrench looks like a monkey.’”
Nate Nicholls’ sculptures so filled his heart, he felt compelled to give them life. The farmer was working on a metal frog last summer when his heart failed and he died at 52. Last fall his children buried him beneath flowers he’d made from water faucet handles.
Wedding Windfall
In West Baton Rouge, Louisiana, there is a legendary love story that has endured for 3 centuries. Brides receive money from a man they never met simply because they got married. His name was Julian Poydras. He died in 1824.
“These are remarkable and poignant stories that need to be told.”
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KEN BURNS
“Those of us who know and work with Bob Dotson stand in awe of his gifts as a writer. Like the work so many viewers have come to love on NBC, this collection of stories captivates and inspires.”
- SAVANNAH GUTHRIE
“Throughout his remarkable career Bob Dotson has searched for the real essence of America – not by interviewing the so-called famous but by seeking out those unnoticed people we pass by every day. Dotson is a national treasure for caring enough to listen.”
- MEREDITH VIERA
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