Arts

At an age when David Ford's big obsession was where to find the next wiffle ball game, Petr Ginz was inventing secret codes, making watercolors, and writing novels—five of them by the age of 14! Petr was murdered by the Nazis two years later, but his amazing life and the many lives he touched in and out of the concentration camps are remembered and celebrated in the Wake Forest University production of Embers and Stars: The Story of Petr Ginz. It's Valentine's Day, and film scholar Mary Dalton takes us Behind the Scenes to answer that nagging question: what exactly makes a movie Romantic. Winston-Salem Forsyth County Arts Council President and CEO Jim Sparrow's got an artistic vision that'll rock—jazz, classical and folk—your world. And then we're off to the dance at High Point University. Cara Hagan is here with a choreographer's keen eye for storytelling. We wrap things up with Touring Theatre of NC actor Camilla Millican and a Valentine's Day Card that'll take you Over the Edge.

Scientists have made some attempts to link mollusks to increased libido. There's even evidence that consuming heavy doses of an amino acid found in oysters can increase sperm count – in rabbits. But do any of these findings actually prove that oysters can — ahem — amp up arousal? Not so much.

"New Orleans buries too many of its young," Wynton Marsalis says in the documentary's introduction. The Whole Gritty City, airing Saturday on CBS, follows young students who take refuge in New Orleans marching bands.

The comedian was one of early network TV's biggest stars, and he didn't do smut or smarmy remarks. Caesar did skits: grown-up, gentle comedy for the whole family. He died Wednesday morning at his home in Beverly Hills.

In his new book, Dr. Kevin Fong explores how humans survive extremes of heat, cold, outer space and deep sea. "We're still exploring the human body and what medicine can do in the same way that the great explorers of the 20th century and every age before them explored the world," he says.

  

Kayla Williams and Brian McGough met in Iraq in 2003. Williams' new memoir, Plenty of Time When We Get Home, describes their homecoming after McGough suffered physical and cognitive injuries in an IED explosion.