TV Picks – Steve Larsen

Going off to college is scary. When my oldest granddaughter went from two decades of daily contact with parents, family and friends, 1500 miles away to a new state where she’d be totally on her own, I worried. Making College Friendships I wanted to encourage her to not feel lonely, and to make new friends…

Late last year I had the opportunity to see an early screening of the film, SHOT IN THE ARM. I just learned it is currently streaming for free on PBS.org and the PBS app. Produced and Directed by Academy Award nominee Scott Hamilton Kennedy and Executive produced by the brilliant Neil deGrasse Tyson, this is…

The Netflix documentary Tell Them you Love Me sheds remarkable insight into a world filled with amazing stories of newly found literacy in nonspeaking people. It provides this understanding without preaching or throwing out a lot of facts, but through brilliant storytelling. While not always easy to watch, I found it riveting. Anna Stubblefield, a…

The final twenty years of my career was directly involved in disrupting large companies stuck with stale “we are too big to fail” thinking. Running into a person near my age, as I did at lunch last week, espousing today’s version of “It’ll never fly, Orville Syndrome,” irritated me. Don’t people read history and pay…

Halfway into Ron Shelton’s book “The Church of Baseball,” we were gifted tickets to the Diamondbacks/Phillies game at Chase Field on August 29. As we drove downtown, I reflected on the book’s influence on how I may see the upcoming game. Shelton’s recounting of his minor league career revealed aspects of the game that had…

By chance, I watched two movies in the same week that, upon reflection, created some remarkable and fun contrasts. The first, AMERICAN FOLK (2017) is a movie on Amazon Prime ($0.99 rental). You can also watch it free (with commercials) on other streaming services like Netflix. The second, Don’t Look Up (2021) is generating a…

It was in high school when a series of classic motivational literature found its way to me. It was after I’d begun to see there was a path for me to succeed in school. The books told me I wasn’t trapped by my circumstances. They said no one but me could decide how I wanted…

Following my recommendation of a series of YouTube videos made by Pedro Mota, two of my friends responded with how much they liked an Amazon Prime documentary, “Himalaya Calling – Overland to the highest passes in the world.” They were right! I’ve watched three of the four episodes, and they are great. Plus, these have…

Do you ever wish for a compelling but simple story having no agenda? Something that every minute you watch you just smile, and say to yourself, “OMG, this is just so good!” If so, watch “Hunt for the Wilderpeople.” The story here is funny and touching, the scenery spectacular, and the actors create strong, believable…

The first of these 3 one-hour films is on wind power. I was instantly hooked. In just over 50 minutes, you get amazing views into the interior workings of massively large wind turbines; learn extraordinary details on how they are made and what it takes to locate them. At first I was a bit put…

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