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All Seasons

Season 1

  • S01E01 It's Alive

    • PBS

    Tom has a question: Whouldn't it be fun to have a live lion cub in the house? Linda warns what live animals do: they grow, move around, and eat. But living things are interesting.

  • S01E02 See How They Grow

    • PBS

    A boy visits Tom and Linda with a couple of puppies. He learns every age has its good side, as illustrated in a story about growing. Tom shows his egg collection.

  • S01E03 A Lot of Living Things

    • PBS

    Linda is surprised looking at her stamps. One of them is apparently from ""Varietyville."" This segues into the story Alice in Varietyville. In it, Alice discovers that different animals have noses, tails, eyes and feet adapted specifically for them.

  • S01E04 See How They Fit

    • PBS

    Robbie and Gary walk into the patio to look for a turtle called Timothy. Tom shows the turtle is camouflaged. It leads him to tell a Barney and Pete story. Pete bumps into all sorts of camouflaged animals on an island, but Barney knows better.

  • S01E05 Togetherness

    • PBS

    Tom has a mechanism designed to take a book off the shelves. Each part relies on the other for the gadget to work. It's the beginning of a long succession of examples in nature on living things depending on other living things.

  • S01E06 Suppose There Were Only People

    • PBS

    A story of silly people who tries to evict animals from their town, is not the only example of how people depend on plants and animals. Linda relates her adventure as a grocery store cashier. She tells one customer that everything he buys, comes from plants and/or animals.

  • S01E07 Once Upon a Dinosaur

    • PBS

    Linda tells a story about the Three Princes of Serendip (later Sri Lanka). Asked if they had seen a lost camel, they reveal the signs they had witnessed. The signs told the three brothers that the camel had a gap in his teeth, one lame leg, and was blind in one eye. Then Linda sheds light on fossils.

  • S01E08 The Clean-Up

    • PBS

    What's the matter with Tom? While Linda is trying to clean up a room, asking what things are, Tom answers ""matter"" each time. Tom shares a Barney and Pete story, in which Pete gets a lesson about three of the states of matter.

  • S01E09 The Surprise

    • PBS

    Tom has a surprise in a box. Instead of three guesses, he gives Linda ""Four S's."" That leads to a fairy tale about a troll and a girl who wants a box. To earn that box, the girl must guess the four properties of matter, all beginning with S. But that's only solids. Liquids, the troll hints, have two S's and a P.

  • S01E10 The Terrible Tiles

    • PBS

    Tom accidentally tips a box of tiles intended for a table top. He and Linda decide to arrange the tiles by shape to make things easier. But objects can be classified in different ways.

  • S01E11 The Measured Loaf

    • PBS

    Tom asks Linda for ""a handful of raisins"" to add to his bread mix. It tells both how important it is to measure accurately with standard units of measure.

  • S01E12 The Change Shop

    • PBS

    Bored Tom and Linda decide they need change. They envision a ""Change Shop,"" detailing physical and chemical changes that may or may not be changed back.

  • S01E13 Alice in Pushpullville

    • PBS

    While straining to move a telephone booth, Linda takes a strange call. She dreams of Alice in Pushpullville. In the story, Alice is surrounded by ""push me"" and ""pull me"" signs. She learns that matter cannot move by itself, only when it is pushed or pulled.

  • S01E14 Treasure Ho!

    • PBS

    The song Six Simple Machines introduces this program and the next two. In this episode, another Barney and Pete story details the lever and the inclined plane. This time Barney gives Pete advice on how to lift a treasure chest out of sand.

  • S01E15 Tom's New House

    • PBS

    Linda tells Tom all he needs to build a house is a tree and a few wedges. Then she hints to how important the screw is.

  • S01E16 Moving a Hippo

    • PBS

    Tom and Linda have been moving furniture, exhausting themselves to some extent. Next time, they agreed, they'll make use if wheels and axles. This is much better than the ""roller"" idea of centuries gone by. Twice Tom and Linda think of a little girl trying to move a hippopotamus. Pulleys are introduced in the last of these hippo stories.

Season 2

  • S02E01 This is the Life

    • PBS

    Tom proposes another planet with a room just like theirs, inhabited with two strange creatures looking down on the Earth. These creatures plan to note human life processes.

  • S02E02 The One and Only

    • PBS

    Linda and Tom are back on the telescope, imagining the two space creatures trying to research human life on Earth. Now the Space Captain wants a human. She implores the Space Lieutenant, who has never seen a human, to get a human for her.

  • S02E03 The Same But Different

    • PBS

    Bored Chris and Robbie begin to fantasize with Tom about how different people look. Theirs is a detective adventure centering around an agency called The Detective Den. Robbie and Chris search for a cuddly grandmother.

  • S02E04 All Systems Go

    • PBS

    Tom and Linda, along with two friends, are rehearsing a variety show on the systems of the body. They discuss the digestive, respiratory, circulatory, and nervous systems. They rummage through a set of props to assemble their make-up, depending on what systens they play.

  • S02E05 Many Happy Returns

    • PBS

    Kathy is upset on her birthday. Linda suggests she talk to a Spirit of Birthdays (Tom), who tells Kathy how fun each stage of human life is.

  • S02E06 In Sickness and In Health

    • PBS

    Tom shows Linda photos of his great-grandfather. He was a man who knew a great deal about good health, and he even jad a word for it: creft. That was an acronym for cleanlinesss, rest, exercise, food, and teeth.

  • S02E07 What on Earth?

    • PBS

    Linda introduces another Terrible Troll story. In it, the Troll enslaves a little girl. The only way she can escape is if she can tell the Troll within three days what materials make up the Earth.

  • S02E08 From the Mountains to the Prairies

    • PBS

    ""From the mountains to the plateaus,"" Tom sings. Although the line may be wrong, it does lead Tom to another Barney and Pete story. In it, Barney and Pete have lost their pirate ship and must ride a magic carpet to find it.

  • S02E09 As the Earth Changes (1)

    • PBS

    Tom emerges with a trunkful of books and diaries belonging to his great-grandfather. He had gone to all parts of the earth noting how the earth undergoes natural changes via water, wind, and ice.

  • S02E10 As the Earth Changes (2)

    • PBS

    Tom and Linda discover more of Gramps' notes about changes on the Earth's surface. Gramps is superimposed over film of a volcanic eruption and geysers. He also documents the destructive effects of an earthquake that ravaged Alaska in 1964.

  • S02E11 Number One Sun

    • PBS

    Chris has his reservations about a hot day. Tom hints to how important the sun is with a story of a boy who wished the sun would not rise again, and apparently saw his wish realized. After the story, Tom plays a cassette tape of a song dictating facts on the sun and (to a lesser extent) the planets.

  • S02E12 All in This Together

    • PBS

    Tom brings in a compost barrel to complete the community that is the Dragons, Wagons & Wax set. Until now, he and Linda had producers and consumers, but not the decomposers. The compost set-up filled the breach.

  • S02E13 What's Going On Around Here?

    • PBS

    Going through the mail, Linda thinks she has an envelope from an ""Alice in Communityville."" This time, Alice's cat comes to life, telling her that plants and animals are suited to their specific environments.

  • S02E14 Now for a Change

    • PBS

    The Change Shop returns, as Tom and Linda fantasize natural changes. Communities can be changed in natural ways, such as fire, water, drought, or wind.

  • S02E15 All Change

    • PBS

    A revisionist Rip Van Winkle story tells of how humans reshape the physical environment, not always for the better.

  • S02E16 Handle with Care

    • PBS

    What is a ""walking catfish""? It's a warning to humankind about mishandling the Earth and disaffecting life biologically.