In an introduction to mindfulness, a mother teaches her young son about breathing exercises and explains how helpful deep breathing can be whenever he feels nervous or has trouble sleeping.

Bill Nye gets aerobic about the importance of respiration when he jogs, bikes, swims, and scuba dives. Discover how to measure how much air each breath contains and make a model lung in a nifty home experiment. See a demonstration of how cigarette smoke can infiltrate and injure lungs.

"We take an average of 7.5 million breaths a year and some 600 million in our lifetime, and what goes on in our body each time oxygen is taken in and carbon dioxide expelled is nothing short of miraculous. 'Our lungs are the lynchpin between our bodies and the outside world,' writes Dr. Michael J. Stephen. And yet, we take our lungs for granted until we're incapacitated and suddenly confronted with their vital importance. In Breath Taking, pulmonologist...