My father, an 87 year old resident of an assisted living facility, has asked me to purchase him some DVD’s to watch. He doesn’t do streaming so please don’t suggest it. I control his finances so it’s up to me to make the purchases.
He has a PhD in biochemistry but is interested in most things related to science. I’ve already ordered some NOVA dvds, a couple of astronomy dvds from Brian Greene, and a few “How It’s Made” seasons. He’s always been interested in how things work or are put together.
Any advice would be appreciated. Double bonus points are given to purchases that can be made on Amazon.
You can sometimes find not-too-expensive used (or even new) copies of The Great Courses (Teaching Company) on DVD on Amazon. (For someone who likes “how things work or are put together,” the ones by Stephen Ressler might be good.)
I considered those. I loved the original when it came out but wonder if it would be dated now. I wasn’t that crazy about Tyson’s version. It might have just been because of my high expectations after the original. I’ll see what my dad thinks. Thanks for the recommendation.
If your father is interested in space exploration and/or the Apollo missions, I highly recommend “Chasing the Moon,” a six-hour documentary that PBS did as part of their American Experience series. It goes into a fair amount of detail on the challenges that they faced, as well as profiling some of the key people in the program, and I enjoyed it a lot. It’s available on both Blu-ray and DVD.
He might like Connections, a mini-series looking at the history of science and technology. It is available on Amazon, but maybe you can find used versions for less somewhere.
At least a few of the episodes are on YouTube. If that’s not an option in general maybe you could show him episode 1 on a device to find out if he wants to see the rest.
Is it an “I’m overwhelmed by navigating through this stuff” sort of thing? If you set up a Netflix account for him (or as a user on your account), and created a watchlist, would that work?
He has a difficult time learning new technologies. Switching inputs on the TV is about as far as he can go right now. I got him a new universal remote about a year ago but he never could figure it out so I had to find one exactly like his older one that had quit. Also, he doesn’t have a smart TV and the wifi in his room is pretty sketchy.
If you live nearby, one option would be to checkout discs from the library and rotate through stuff he may only watch a few times, like movies. It may also be worth checking to see if the facility has a video library already.
Some cheap places to get movies are thrift stores, Half Priced Books, craigslist, etc. Over time you can keep an eye out for stuff that he or the other residents may enjoy. If you have to send the stuff to him, you can send it using the cheap media rate through the post office.
Unfortunately, it’s a 4 hour drive from my house to his facility. He’s not much of a Hollywood movie kind of guy but if I see any documentaries (which are fairly rare 2nd hand), I’ll pick them up.
ETA. I really don’t understand the new quote text functionality. It seems like sometimes it works just like the old board and sometimes it doesn’t work at all.
I came in to recommend this. I also suggest James Burke’s other series – The Day the Universe Changed (also done for PBS) and the two series he did for The Learning Channel, Connections2 and Connections3. I know all of these have come out on regular DVD. I don’t know if they’re on Blu-ray.
If you can find it, The Secret Life of Machines is a hoot!
I’d recommend Clash of the Gods from the History Channel, but that would be self-serving.
I would also float the idea of borrowing from the library if that is an option. Save a little money, and not have to worry about them stacking up over time. If it’s not something he’s interested in, no harm, no foul. Back it goes.
