A guided exploration of seabed flora and fauna that live, against all odds, in a volcanic environment.

Ninetta is in prison, condemned to death, and things are looking very bleak, indeed. Don't worry though; in the end, love and justice win out, and everyone except the magistrate lives happily ever after.

Francesca starts her lessons at the stable by taking a halter and lead rope to go and meet a young horse by the name of Stella.

Big or small, thick or thin? Marika gives you a jump start to some of the most common opposites used in everyday Italian. You'll get the picture!

Fellini is at Cannes for the festival and screening of La Dolce Vita. He tells of his ironic encounters with unusual characters, who complain about the oddity of Fellini's movie characters.

We follow Francesca along to a riding stable for lessons. The place is called Ciampacavallo and its peculiarity is that its horses would have ended their lives badly, had it not been for this charitable organization.

Anna and Marika take us through the imperative, the subjunctive and the gerund forms of the verb, essere (to be). The subjunctive is used less and less in modern English, so it can be tricky to learn in Italian, but little by little even these forms will become part of your Italian language skills.

Magpies [gazze ladre] in folklore are known to be attracted by shiny things. Rossini's opera La Gazza Ladra recounts the story of Ninetta, a servant girl. She is wrongly accused of stealing the silverware that the family magpie stole.

The "Sciara del Fuoco" is a stream of red-hot lava that travels from Stromboli's volcanic summit to the sea. Seeing it is an unforgettable experience.

Office gossip, the Italian way. Marika and Anna dish about the boss, the boss's nephew, the boss's nephew with the wife of the old boss, a temp--all while pretending to work.

Marika gets to help a friend in need, and at the same time, show off her skill at using a hammer and nails. She tells us how she put together a chest of drawers and put up a shelf all in a morning's work, and had fun doing it.

Marika and Anna go over the future and conditional tenses for the verb essere (to be). The vocabulary review covers the future and the conditional conjugations for this verb.

Federico Fellini discusses Marcello Mastroianni's role as "everyman" in La Dolce Vita. He encourages viewers to see Mastroianni's "passions, hopes, fears and cowardice, and anguish and sleaziness" as similar to their own.

Pre-war and wartime cooking, when fuel for cooking was in short supply, made raw recipes come to the fore.

Rossellini's 1949 movie Stromboli put the Aeolian island on the cultural map forever.