The programs found here cover the topics of science, medicine and technology in entertaining and informative ways. The heart of the catalogue is WGBH’s NOVA series that, for over 30 years, has celebrated the premise that science is about curious people exploring interesting questions. Each program invites viewers to go along on a journey filled with intrigue, excitement, discovery and wonder.
Thousands of exquisitely painted ancient Maya ceramics have flooded into the world's public and private collections. Their images and texts have opened windows onto Maya life, literature, mythology, and history. But becaus... SEE MORE >>
An epic spanning four centuries, it begins in the 17th century in Westminster with a court magician's wager that he could make the King shiver on a hot summer's day: and ends in the future with a strange gravity-defying qu... SEE MORE >>
NOVA experiences the relentless, round-the-clock life aboard the US Navy aircraft carrier, Independence, where every day is a constant drill of launching and landing aircraft atop a floating city of 5,000 people. The actio... SEE MORE >>
In a gloomy cave perched high in a canyon near the Dead Sea, archaeologists made a startling discovery in 1960: a bag containing letters written on papyrus nearly two thousand years ago. The letters were written by one of ... SEE MORE >>
Millions remember the countdowns, launchings, splashdowns and parades as the US raced the USSR to the Moon in the 1960s. Few know that both superpowers ran parallel covert space programs to launch military astronauts on sp... SEE MORE >>
Autism is the fastest rising developmental disorder in the industrialized world. With an astounding 600% increase in diagnoses in the last 20 years, scientists are still grappling with its cause. Research has been frustrat... SEE MORE >>
Viewers see what it's like to be overwhelmed by a sudden onslaught of "white death": an avalanche. Avalanches are an escalating peril as skiers and snowmobilers push the limits into the back country. NOVA witnesses scienti... SEE MORE >>
Known inaccurately to the general public as "Project Jennifer," Azorian was the CIA's audacious attempt to recover the wreck of the Soviet ballistic missile submarine "K-129", by a specially designed and purpose-built salv... SEE MORE >>
NOVA accompanies famed test pilot Darryl Greenamyer and his intrepid crew on a perilous mission to repair and re-fly a B-29 bomber stranded on the Greenland icecap since 1947. In the face of incredible hardships, the team ... SEE MORE >>
Two aviation giants, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, compete to build the next generation fighter jet and win the largest government contract ever awarded, estimated at one trillion dollars. For over five years, with unprecede... SEE MORE >>
NOVA presents a comprehensive three-part, three-hour special: investigating explosive new discoveries that are transforming the picture of how we became human. The first program explores fresh clues about our earliest ance... SEE MORE >>
BIBLE'S BURIED SERCETS, a landmark two-hour NOVA special, breaks exciting new ground in investigating the origins of the ancient Israelites, their faith in a single all-powerful God, and the creation of the Bible. A powerf... SEE MORE >>
The latest public opinion polls show that a vast majority of Americans believe the world is facing a global climate crisis. They are willing to pay more for "cleaner energy", and they want our government to take appropria... SEE MORE >>
The story of the expedition and subsequent analysis of the only intact skeleton of a thylacoleo -- the marsupial lion -- ever found. The adventure to extract the fossil bones and the project to discover what they reveal ov... SEE MORE >>
Botany of Desire tells the utterly original story of four everyday plants and the way they have domesticated humankind. In 1983 Michael Pollan and his wife left New York City to make a new home on an abandoned dairy farm. ... SEE MORE >>
When David Vetter died at the age of 12, he was already world famous: the boy in the plastic bubble. Mythologized as the plucky, handsome child who had defied the odds, his life story is in fact even more dramatic. It is a... SEE MORE >>
Around
3,600 years ago, reliefs in Egyptian tombs and temples depict pharaohs and
warriors proudly riding into battle on horse-drawn chariots. Some historians
claim that the chariot launched a technological and strategi... SEE MORE >>
Gothic Cathedrals: these skyscrapers of stone dominated skylines for nearly a thousand years. Their revolutionary design made it possible for builders to erect walls almost entirely of glass that support multi-ton ceilings... SEE MORE >>
The quest to discover the car of the tomorrow is an adventure that has really just begun. There's a growing list of experts that help people understand how and why the car we will drive in the future will be different from... SEE MORE >>
On November 22, 1963 the most powerful man in the world was gunned down in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses, police, and photographers. It was the crime of the century—and it was never solved. In anticipat... SEE MORE >>
Racing to New York Hospital, a doctor relays urgent instructions to the Emergency Room where a child, hit by a car, lies unconscious. In a gripping real-life drama, NOVA follows famous neurosurgeon Jam Ghajar as he struggl... SEE MORE >>
Welcome to the thought-provoking world of bioethics, a constantly evolving drama of complex choices: from new ways to be conceived to new definitions of life and death; from the surgical and pharmacological mitigation of n... SEE MORE >>
This is a definitive look back at how a handful of pioneers deciphered the intricate system of hieroglyphs developed by the Maya. One of the greatest detective stories in all of archaeology, it has never been told in depth... SEE MORE >>
The king of the dinosaurs is back, as public and private interests battle for the finest T. rex specimen ever found. NOVA covers the fight for America's disappearing fossil legacy. SEE MORE >>
On the morning of July 25, 1909, Louis Bleriot set out on his epic flight across the English Channel, marking the first long-distance flight over water and the first air crossing of a national boundary. Bleriot's triumph c... SEE MORE >>
Why does Charles Darwin's "dangerous idea" matter today more than ever, and how does it convey the power of science to explain the past and predict the future of life on Earth? The first show interweaves the drama of Darwi... SEE MORE >>
In 2010, massive earthquakes struck Haiti, Chile, Mexico, California, Indonesia, and India, adding up to one of the worst annual death tolls ever recorded. Is there any link between all these disasters? Are scientists maki... SEE MORE >>
In the spring of 2011, the worst tornado outbreak in decades left a trail of destruction across the U.S., killing many hundreds. Why has there been such an extreme outbreak? How do such weather patterns form? With modern w... SEE MORE >>
Are scientists getting close to predicting volcanic eruptions, potentially saving thousands of lives? In a follow-up to Deadliest Earthquakes, NOVA's reportage on earthquake prediction, this film takes viewers to the front... SEE MORE >>
Alaska's Mount McKinley, commonly referred to as Denali, is the highest and coldest peak in North America, and one of the deadliest mountains on earth. Each year more than 1,000 people attempt to summit it, many never to r... SEE MORE >>
Over 60,000 years ago, the first modern humans—people physically identical to us today—left their African homeland and entered Europe, then a bleak and inhospitable continent in the grip of the Ice Age. But when they a... SEE MORE >>
Mont Blanc is one of the most magnetic mountain vistas in the world: no other mountain range has such a long record of mountaineering and glaciology. But the two hundred years of winter sports, science, and tourism, have d... SEE MORE >>
In 1870, America's untamed West was dry, sparsely vegetated, and constantly eroding. But beneath the surface lay a treasure unlike any in the world: the bones of countless prehistoric creatures. For the emerging field of A... SEE MORE >>
There are many dinosaur bones on Alaska's North Slope, but they're trapped in an impenetrable wall of permafrost. Dr. Tom Rich is the tenacious fossil hunter: a paleontologist who has made his name digging in extreme place... SEE MORE >>
This is the last installment in the groundbreaking NOVA series that began in 1987 and followed seven students starting out at Harvard Medical School. Over the past two decades, NOVA has documented these individuals' trial... SEE MORE >>
How did dogs become our best friends? And why does every breed look so different and have such distinctive quirks of behavior? With the help of cutting edge science from the dog genome project and elsewhere, NOVA takes vie... SEE MORE >>
An epidemic of eating disorders is spreading through America's youth, a contagion fanned by the media's obsession with wafer-thin celebrities. For millions of young Americans, the conflict between real and fashionable imag... SEE MORE >>
NOVA looks at the high-stakes quest to predict earthquakes. Despite past disappointments, geologists still hope to divine the clues that precede nature's ultimate upheavals. SEE MORE >>
NOVA presents a penetrating profile of Albert Einstein, who contributed more than any other scientist to our modern vision of physical reality. This films traces his extraordinary rise from a student who flunked his engine... SEE MORE >>
Everyone's heard of it, but what does the world's most famous equation, E=mc2, really mean? NOVA dramatizes the human stories of the men and women whose innovative thinking across four centuries led finally to Einstein's b... SEE MORE >>
String theory: It's the Holy Grail of physics - the search for ultimate law and order in the universe. And in the last few years, excitement has grown among scientists as they've pursued a revolutionary new approach to uni... SEE MORE >>
Throughout the ages, the world has enjoyed a vast and unlimited ocean, yielding abundant seafood. But increasing demand, new technologies, and burgeoning coastal populations are straining the limits of the ocean's ability ... SEE MORE >>
Shot over three years with unique behind-the-scenes access from The Port Authority of New York, this fi lm follows the reconstruction of the Freedom Tower, the September 11th Memorial and the Santiago Calatrava designed tr... SEE MORE >>
In the wake of the Mt. Everest disaster that killed eight climbers in a single day in 1996, a NOVA team headed by three-time Everest summiteer and filmmaker David Breashears returned to the mountain to shed new light on th... SEE MORE >>
This series examines evolutionary science and the profound effect it has had on society and culture. From the genius and torment of Charles Darwin to the vast changes that spawned the tree of life, from the role of mass ex... SEE MORE >>
Brian Greene is going to let you in on a secret: We've all been deceived. Our perceptions of time and space have led us astray. Much of what we thought we knew about our universe--that the past has already happened and the... SEE MORE >>
As today's demand for seafood far exceeds the ocean's ability to keep pace, aquaculture, or fish farming, has become necessary to take pressure off over-exploited fisheries. Yet, large sectors of the global aquaculture ind... SEE MORE >>
Scientists are on the verge of answering one of the greatest questions in history: Are we alone? Combining the latest telescope images with dazzling CGI, Finding Life Beyond Earth immerses audiences in the sights and sound... SEE MORE >>
Filmed during the disastrous fire season of 2000, FIRE WARS joins smokejumpers as they battle to contain the worst wildfire outbreaks in half a century. The show combines spectacular action scenes with a provocative look a... SEE MORE >>
Flowers hold a special place in the plant world as well as in the human heart. There are somewhere between 220,000 to over 400,000 different flowering species on earth. They dominate our gardens and landscapes, and provi... SEE MORE >>
What if you could probe a 3D image of a murder victim's corpse months or years after an autopsy, peeling apart layers of digital flesh with the flick of a finger? Could detectives solve cold cases by "visiting" a virtual c... SEE MORE >>
Imagine a moment from the age of dinosaurs frozen in time: primitive birds, bees, insects, early mammals, the first known flowering plants, and of course, dinosaurs, all exquisitely preserved in fine-grained fossils from C... SEE MORE >>
NOVA celebrates the story of the father of modern science and his struggle to get Church authorities to accept the truth of his astonishing discoveries in Galileo's Battle for the Heavens. The program is based on Dava Sobe... SEE MORE >>
The Pentagon believes robots will play a key role in reducing human risk during military operations; the DARPA Grand Challenge may trigger just the technological breakthroughs they need. In 2005,195 teams from around the g... SEE MORE >>
Heart disease is the number one killer of Americans. How can a seemingly healthy 44-year-old suddenly drop dead from a massive heart attack? His case is not unusual, as this documentary explains. More than half of all peop... SEE MORE >>
In 1991, professional diver John Chatterton discovered a sunken German U-boat from World War II, lying undetected only 60 miles off the New Jersey shore, its unexploded torpedoes and the bodies of its crew still aboard. Th... SEE MORE >>
Every summer, thousands of tourists step aboard a 70 year-old ferryboat named the Ammonia, moored in the sparkling waters of Lake Tinn in southeast Norway. In the middle of the lake, over a thousand feet down, lie the perf... SEE MORE >>
In May 2009, NASA sent a shuttle crew on a risky mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope for the last time. Hubble has enthralled scientists and the public by capturing deep views of the cosmos and a wealth of data f... SEE MORE >>
Three and a half billion years of evolution has produced uncountable billions of living species. But only one--humans--can think in symbols; recombine those symbols into infinite meanings; invent a technology to disseminat... SEE MORE >>
On May 3, 1999, one of the most powerful tornadoes ever recorded carved a path of complete destruction near Oklahoma City. To scientists, the supertwister held sobering lessons about the future of rapidly expanding cities ... SEE MORE >>
This two-hour special marks the 400th anniversary of the telescope, examining how this simple instrument has fundamentally changed our understanding of our place in the universe. What began as a curiosity -- two spectacle ... SEE MORE >>
Where do nature's building blocks come from--the hidden ingredients of everything in our world, from the carbon in our bodies to the metals in our smart phones? They're called the elements, and most people encounter them p... SEE MORE >>
What do movie special effects, the stock market, heart attacks, and the rings of Saturn have in common? They're all connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world an... SEE MORE >>
NOVA viewers last glimpsed the rovers one year into their pioneering exploration. At the end of NOVA's award-winning Welcome to Mars, Spirit was poised to begin the first, daunting ascent of a Martian mountain in the Colum... SEE MORE >>
Italy’s Mystery Mountains explores the fascinating geologic story of Italy, the land known for its fabulous art, fantastic food, opera, the dolce vita, and so much more. What’s less known about Italy is the diversity a... SEE MORE >>
On September 26, 2005, a group of citizens, scientists and lawyers gathered in the tiny town of Dover, Pennsylvania, for a landmark trial. At the heart of the case was a simple question: did the D... SEE MORE >>
NOVA dives beneath the waters of Pearl Harbor to trace provocative new clues to one of the most tragic events of World War II--the sinking of the USS Arizona. More than 1,000 crew members perished in the greatest single lo... SEE MORE >>
Is the human race facing real threats to its existence? In the form of top-10 list of doomsday scenarios, Last Days of Man is a scientific examination of the disasters that have the capacity to annihilate the human race--a... SEE MORE >>
In May 2008, a scientific team made worldwide headlines by announcing headlines of a previously unsuspected impact from space that had devastated prehistoric North America at the end of the last Ice Age. According to this... SEE MORE >>
Our planet is lit up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We’re addicted to light of all kinds, and like anything else that’s addictive, is too much a bad thing? Lights Out! joins leading scientists in the lab and in the fie... SEE MORE >>
Humans may think they run the world, but there's another superpower who is really on top. They outnumber us a million to one--and little can stand in their way. Their workers lift weight twice their size. Their soldiers ar... SEE MORE >>
Shortly after the US entered World War II, an alarming intelligence report stated that Germany and Japan were developing biological weapons for potential offensive use. In response, the US and its allies rushed to develop ... SEE MORE >>
Every so often a giant emerges on the stage of science, someone who transcends the narrow boundaries of a particular line of research and alters our perspective of the world. E.O. Wilson is such a man. While studying ants,... SEE MORE >>
For over twenty years, a team led by archaeologist Bill Fash has been at the forefront of research into the ancient Maya kings of Central America. NOVA's cameras were there to capture Fash's excavation of the burial of the... SEE MORE >>
Mustang is a tiny kingdom, hemmed in by the world's tallest peaks along the northern border of Nepal. This speck of neglected land conceals a spectacular treasure from the past--the monastery of Thubchen, decorated with as... SEE MORE >>
It was one of humankind's most epic quests--a technical problem so complex that it challenged the best minds of its time. The problem was navigation by sea--how to know where you were when you sailed beyond the sight of la... SEE MORE >>
In early January 2004, two spacecraft carrying identical robotic explorers touch down on the surface of Mars. The show features a gripping behind-the-scenes glimpse of the design, testing, and launch of the mission. The en... SEE MORE >>
From carbon nanotubes to artificial skin, the world is poised at the frontier of a revolution in materials science as far-reaching as the biotech breakthroughs of the last two decades. MAKING STUFF is the first series to l... SEE MORE >>
At 2:50 p.m. on April 15, two bomb blasts turned the Boston Marathon
finish line from a scene of triumph to tragedy—leaving three dead,
hundreds injured, and a city gripped by heartbreak and terror. Less
than five... SEE MORE >>
What does it take for any reasonably fit person to compete in one of the world's toughest road races? NOVA finds out in Marathon, a one-hour special that's both reality-TV and an intriguing scientific exploration of the wa... SEE MORE >>
In the aftermath of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, NOVA presents Mind Over Money--an entertaining and penetrating exploration of why mainstream economists failed to predict the crash of 2008 and why... SEE MORE >>
Mountaineers and scientists battle the snowy precipices of Antarctica's highest peak, the Vinson Massif. The film, shot in high-definition, is told through the voice of Jon Krakauer, mountaineer and best-selling author of ... SEE MORE >>
It is a tantalizing idea: a shriveled mummy that has lain neglected on a dusty museum shelf at Niagara Falls could be the remains of a long-lost Egyptian pharaoh. While a trail of clues hints at how the looted mummy made i... SEE MORE >>
The power of music and its effect on the human mind is a fascinating topic for neuroscientists exploring the gateway to the mysteries of the brain. This documentary illuminates how the brain uses music to shape the human e... SEE MORE >>
Deep in the heart of the Guadeloupe Mountains in southern New Mexico, rock-eating microbes are at work. But their appetite is dainty compared with the voracious hunger their ancestors had millions of years ago when they ca... SEE MORE >>
At the far western end of the Himalayas in Northern Pakistan looms the massive Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain on earth. This science mystery tracks six leading geologists from around the world in their quest to p... SEE MORE >>
Most of us best know the chicken from our dinner plates: whether as thigh, wing, or drumstick. We barely pause a moment to consider the bird's many virtues. This one-hour film by Mark Lewis expands the frontiers of popula... SEE MORE >>
"Funny, lively, thoroughly absorbing documentary... smart tightly focused and deeply affecting, 'Naturally Obsessed' is an inspiration." -The Washington Post
An award-winning film that tells a vivid, suspenseful story about... SEE MORE >>
NOVA's scienceNOW is an innovative science news magazine show that draws on a limitless range of potential stories: from the secrets of the genetic code to fuel cells and hydrogen powered cars, from the battle against canc... SEE MORE >>
Go inside a very special emergency room and witness the efforts of a renown team of wildlife veterinarians to save sick and injured ocean animals, like an adorable but weak Harbor Seal pup or the full grown, feisty Califo... SEE MORE >>
Commissioned for the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., OCEAN ODYSSEY takes viewers to some of the world's most remote and magical ocean places. See tiny damselfish in their splendid cora... SEE MORE >>
Who would have predicted that a hot spot left over from the Big Bang would eventually lead to the Earth, the cosmos: and to us? NOVA covers all the exciting steps in between on ORIGINS, two one-hour films on the beginnings... SEE MORE >>
A portrait of the lives and the tumultuous times of two remarkable scientists whose extraordinary collaboration culminated in the discovery of nuclear fission, the splitting of the atom that changed the future. The program... SEE MORE >>
Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto has held a warm place in the public imagination. So, when the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium stopped calling Pluto a planet, director Neil deGrasse Tyson found hi... SEE MORE >>
On May 13, 1607, three English sailing vessels dropped anchor beside a small island fringed by swamps in the James River, Virginia. On board were 104 colonists who established the first successful English settlement in the... SEE MORE >>
Can emerging technology defeat global warming? The United States has invested tens of billions of dollars in clean energy projects as our leaders try to save our crumbling economy and our poisoned planet in one bold, green... SEE MORE >>
For the nineteenth century, the world beneath the sea played much the same role that "outer space" has played for the twentieth. Proteus uses the undersea world as the locus for a meditation on the troubled intersection of... SEE MORE >>
** Winner, Political Documentaries, 2011 Banff Non-Fiction Rockies **
The current campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are the world's first Robotic War, with over 7,000 robots in the air and 12,000 on the ground. Warfare has ... SEE MORE >>
For 45 centuries, the Great Sphinx has cast its enigmatic gaze over Egypt's Giza plateau. The biggest and oldest statue in a land of colossal ancient monuments, its scale is staggering: the mighty head towers as tall as th... SEE MORE >>
A revolution is transforming the armed forces of every nation. In Rise of the Drones, NOVA launches a provocative investigation of the explosive growth of airborne UAVs, or pilotless drones. During the invasion of Iraq in ... SEE MORE >>
Through personal stories of Pacific Islanders, this film shows how global warming is not something that looms in the distant future, but is a threat whose first impacts may already have begun. Pacific Islanders take the vi... SEE MORE >>
NOVA presents the first attempt on television to explore the riddle of quintessence--a mysterious repulsive force that some scientists believe counteracts gravity. The program follows the efforts of two rival teams of astr... SEE MORE >>
From vaccines to antibiotics, clean water to nutrition, bio-terror threats to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the six-part series Rx for Survival: A Global Health Challenge tells the compelling stories of global health challenges a... SEE MORE >>
Sand Wars is a surprising
investigation into one of the most consumed natural resources on the planet.
Due to the high demand for sand, the planet’s reserves are being threatened. Three-quarters
of the world’s beach... SEE MORE >>
In the face of steeply rising oil prices and political turmoil in the Middle East, there's new urgency about finding a solution to our uncertain energy future. Could it be time to take solar energy seriously again? Breakth... SEE MORE >>
The Search
for the Origin of Life follows four groups of researchers from NASA’s elite Astrobiology
Institute as they attempt to answer one of humanity’s oldest questions: how did life begin? As they travel to
the p... SEE MORE >>
The discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA can be credited to three British scientists: James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins. But their breakthrough would have been impossible without the work of a brill... SEE MORE >>
In 2002, an immense ice shelf 200 meters thick and the size of Manhattan abruptly collapsed into the ocean off western Antarctica. This event shocked scientists already concerned by the unprecedented rate of melting in som... SEE MORE >>
Every year a million visitors are drawn to the Salisbury Plain, in southern England, to gaze upon a mysterious circle of stones. Stonehenge may be the best-known and most mysterious relic of prehistory. During the 20th cen... SEE MORE >>
Erected by the ancient Greeks as a temple to Athena, the Parthenon has served as a church, a fortress, an ammunition dump, and the model for countless banks, courthouses and museums across the world. It has been shot at, e... SEE MORE >>
NOVA takes viewers inside one of the most extraordinary code-breaking feats in history. In 1943, the "Venona" project found a chink in the supposedly unbreakable code used by the Soviet Union and exposed a vast network of ... SEE MORE >>
Dao and Duan are literally Siamese twins, for the land where they were born is Thailand, formerly called Siam. The orphan girls were sent to America in April 1993 to be evaluated at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia,... SEE MORE >>
On any given night around the world, thousands of people peer into deep space because of John Dobson. A 90-year old with a white ponytail and a knack for comedy, John Dobson revolutionized astronomy. He is the inventor of ... SEE MORE >>
Can we make a robot that really thinks, learns, and acts like us? Replicating the human brain is a lot tougher than it looks; the promise of walking, talking "androids" is still just a fantasy. But scientists are edging cl... SEE MORE >>
A luscious exploration of the natural world, Smarty Plants effortlessly integrates hard core science with a lighthearted look at how plants behave, revealing a world where plants are as busy, responsive, and complex as we ... SEE MORE >>
This film puts a human face on the battle being waged in the deaf community over cochlear implants, a medical technology which is welcomed by some as the long-awaited cure for deafness and reviled by others as a cruel, abu... SEE MORE >>
The world changed 50 years ago, on October 4, 1957, when the US public heard the shocking news that the Soviet Union had successfully launched the first satellite, Sputnik I. Why didn't the US beat the Soviets in this firs... SEE MORE >>
In this production based on the newly released book by Jim Bamford, NOVA brings to light the modern technology underlying the National Security Agency's ongoing hunt for information in the war on terror. In the aftermath ... SEE MORE >>
This gripping new series takes viewers inside the secret world of spy-craft. Each episode focuses on the extraordinary characters and amazing technology at the center of an incredible mission. From spy satellites and micro... SEE MORE >>
The NOVA team looks at what made Hurricane Katrina so deadly and analyzes how this event resulted in destruction on an unprecedented scale for the region. Storm that Drowned a City offers eyewitness testimony of what actu... SEE MORE >>
At the height of the Cold War, US subs gathered secrets that neither spies nor satellites could expose. Until recently, almost nobody knew the hidden history of their tragedies and triumphs. As the US strove for supremacy ... SEE MORE >>
Viewers are sidewalk supervisors for one of the most unusual construction projects in the US--the building of the stunningly beautiful and eminently practical Clark Bridge over the Mississippi River. Contractors faced ever... SEE MORE >>
We have witnessed remarkable progress in both treatment and basic understanding of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. And now, a series of discoveries about HIV-infected patients who have successful... SEE MORE >>
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was one of the most fascinating scientists of the 20th century. He invented, developed or imagined the technology that brought us electricity, remote control, neon and florescent lighting, radio tr... SEE MORE >>
Every day, it seems, some new study reveals a previously hidden epidemic of depression, anxiety, or other psychological problem. At the root of the confusion lies three key questions: What is biological, what is cultural, ... SEE MORE >>
NOVA reveals the ancient secrets of pyramid building by actually constructing one, putting clever and sometimes bizarre pyramid construction theories to the test. This monument to the most astonishing engineering feat of a... SEE MORE >>
With oceanographer Robert Ballard, NOVA dives to the watery grave of Titanic's nearly identical twin, Britannic. The luxury liner--serving as a hospital ship--was supposed to be even more unsinkable than Titanic, but she w... SEE MORE >>
For two hours in July of 1969, the world stood still and watched as man landed and walked on the moon. Tens of millions saw it happen, on blurry black and white television, beamed back a quarter million miles across the he... SEE MORE >>
Across North America elevators move 325 million passengers every day, and most of the time people don't give it a second thought. In this program, NOVA provides viewers with answers to a series of questions: How do elevato... SEE MORE >>
This program seeks to answer the question, "Why does anyone still die of cancer?" Award-winning filmmaker Linda Garmon shares the story of her husband's battle with cancer, returning to the same hospitals and institutions ... SEE MORE >>
At age 17, filmmaker Laurel Chiten was in a terrible car accident. Months later, her neck began jerking out of control. Doctors finally figured out that Chiten had dystonia: a neurological disorder that forces your muscles... SEE MORE >>
Interweaving biography and social history,
The Most Dangerous Woman in America tells the extraordinary story of
Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary. She gained this notoriety by
be... SEE MORE >>
It could be NASA's last chance to set wheels down on Mars until the end of the decade: this August, a rover named Curiosity will touch down inside Mars' Gale Crater, carrying ten new instruments that will advance the quest... SEE MORE >>
Al Giddings, four-time Emmy Award winner and one of the world's most accomplished and renowned underwater director-producer-cinematographers, takes viewers on a deep-sea diving trip. Drawing from more than 30 years of divi... SEE MORE >>
Building a submarine without the resources of a big shipyard and using only scavenged or off-the-shelf parts is an unusual idea by any standard. But Peter Robbins has dreamed of submarines all his life, and he is an unusua... SEE MORE >>
Just 200 miles south of the equator, Kilimanjaro has both equatorial and arctic conditions. Five distinct climatic zones inhabit the slopes of this 19,340-foot peak. It is a botanist’s dream—rainforests rise out of the sav... SEE MORE >>
A WALK TO BEAUTIFUL tells the stories of five Ethiopian women who suffer from devastating childbirth injuries and make the spiritual journey to reclaim their lost dignity. Rejected by their husbands and ostracized by their... SEE MORE >>
This sequel to NOVA's, MARS DEAD OR ALIVE, follows the adventures of Spirit and Opportunity on the red planet. Once again, NOVA's producers enjoy unprecedented access to the scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as t... SEE MORE >>
In this two-hour special, NOVA takes viewers to the frontiers of evolutionary science. Over he last decade, an exciting field of biology has emerged to help explain how a small number of genes could be responsible for the ... SEE MORE >>
From the Greenland Ice Caps--where scientists can read the history of the planet--to the equatorial Maldives Islands--which are threatened by rising sea levels--from the corridors of power in Washington to the rapidly grow... SEE MORE >>
NOVA reveals in this film new evidence about the 1932 kidnapping and death of 18-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr., featuring compelling evidence that the man who was electrocuted for his murder, Bruno Hauptmann, did not act... SEE MORE >>
Several years ago a law passed by the U.S. Congress returned to Indian people the right to control the remains of their ancestors which had routinely found their way from native gravesites to museums, private collections a... SEE MORE >>
What will the world of 2050 look like? During the 1970s, many researchers made gloomy predictions that an exploding world population would overwhelm global resources by the early decades of this century. Despite the coloss... SEE MORE >>
NOVA presents the definitive documentary on the invention of the airplane. While many shows have retold the Wright brothers' personal story, no program has properly explored the astonishing inventiveness that they applied ... SEE MORE >>
For years scientists have claimed they would soon be ready to perform transplants from pigs to humans. But they never seem to get any closer to performing any actual surgery. Meanwhile an ethical, moral and scientific deba... SEE MORE >>
