Season 1
Episode: 1x01 | Airdate: Mar 3, 1974
NOVA premieres on public television with a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a nature film. Oxford Scientific Films Unit shows how it tackles such problems as filming a wood-wasp laying its egg inside trees, the hatching of a chick and the courtship rituals of the stickleback.
Episode: 1x02 | Airdate: Mar 10, 1974
NOVA explores the mighty Colorado River which today has become the life-blood of the Southwest, providing water and electricity to the farms and cities of California, Nevada, and Arizona. The program examines the political expediency and technological over-optimism that has led to some major miscalculations of the river's capacity.
Episode: 1x03 | Airdate: Mar 17, 1974
NOVA explores the impact of whaling and the goods it produces for the industry, verses the grace and beatury of this intelligent mammal of the sea.
Episode: 1x04 | Airdate: Mar 24, 1974
Does life exist outside this planet? The Viking lander will set down on Mars in July 1976 to try to find out just that. NOVA explores how life started on Earth and examines the Viking Lander being built in its germ-free room before starting its long journey.
Episode: 1x05 | Airdate: Mar 31, 1974
How does a primitive nomadic tribe of the Amazon basin cope with the encroachment of Western settlers? NOVA looks at both sides of the story, revealing the misunderstandings between the two cultures.
Episode: 1x06 | Airdate: Apr 7, 1974
Medicine was transformed in the 19th century by the discovery of anesthesia; surgery, until then hasty, bloody and completely unable to deal with internal disorders, subsequently took its place in the front rank of medical practice. This NOVA docudrama depicts the pioneers of medicine.
Episode: 1x07 | Airdate: Apr 14, 1974
In 1054 AD, the Chinese recorded the explosion of a star so bright that it lit the sky for three weeks, even during the day. It was the explosion of a dying star that was bigger than our sun. NOVA explores this mysterious explosion that led to the discovery of Crab Nebula.
Episode: 1x08 | Airdate: Apr 21, 1974
Birds migrate in search of perpetual summer, sometimes traveling as much as 20,000 miles every year. NOVA uses radar to track and identify migrating birds that travel at night, focusing on how they coose routes tat avoid bad weather and make the best of prevailing winds—information that can aid meteorologists.
Episode: 1x09 | Airdate: Apr 28, 1974
The advance of medicine depends inevitably on the testing of experimental procedures on human volunteers from either the healthy or the sick. Yet such procedures are often dangerous, and may not be of direct benefit to the subject. NOVA examines how individuals' interests are safeguarded, and asks, under what circumstances experiments should be conducted on children.
Episode: 1x10 | Airdate: May 5, 1974
Washoe is a chimp more like a person: she talks with her hands. NOVA visits with Washoe and her teachers—Professor Allen Gardner and Dr. Trixie Gardner—to learn more about this unusual animal.
Episode: 1x11 | Airdate: May 12, 1974
When Paul Kammerer committed suicide in 1926, it was taken by most of his fellow biologists as a tacit admission of guilt that he had faked his experiments purporting to show the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Arthur Koestler joins NOVA in an in-depth examination of Kammerer's infamous experiment.
Episode: 1x12 | Airdate: May 19, 1974
Nuclear fusion offers the promises of an unlimited, clean source of energy. But achieving fusion has proved one of the most difficult and elusive goals of the physicist. NOVA tells the story of the twists and turns and the international competition along the road toward the achievement of fusion; and details the recent breakthroughs which seem at last to have brought it within reach.
Episode: 1x13 | Airdate: May 26, 1974
Who were the people that built the first cities -- complete with apartment blocks -- in North America? They were the Anasazi Indians, who lived in the Southwest for some eight or nine thousand years and who then, in about 1300 AD, abruptly abandoned their cities and apparently disappeared. NOVA traces the steps of this ancient sophisticated culture.
Season 2
Episode: 2x01 | Airdate: Nov 3, 1974
NOVA travels to forests and marshes to discover why birds sing and finds surprising parallels with the acquisition of speech in humans.
Episode: 2x02 | Airdate: Nov 10, 1974
Many insects and some mammals use smell as a primary means of communication. NOVA explains how, for example, the entire economy of an ant's nest is organized by smell, and how some moths use smell for population control—an ability we is now beginning to understand.
Episode: 2x03 | Airdate: Nov 17, 1974
Smashing matter into ever smaller pieces in an attempt to find its fundamental building blocks has produced a confused nightmare of particles. NOVA looks at this on-again, off-again story—one of sciences's most mysterious—and, one of the most expensive, involving some of the biggest machines in the world.
Episode: 2x04 | Airdate: Nov 24, 1974
Most of us spend one-third of our lives in a state of which we understand remarkably little—some people sleep for only a few minutes a night, and function perfectly well, while others declare that eight hours isn't enough. NOVA explores traditional notions about how much sleep we need; looks at effects of the sleeping pill, and, perhaps the most baffling of all aspects of sleep—dreaming.
Episode: 2x05 | Airdate: Dec 1, 1974
NOVA joins a team of U.S. Geological Survey scientists on a mission to find out just how San Francisco Bay works: its physics, its chemistry and its biology.
Episode: 2x06 | Airdate: Dec 8, 1974
Just why did Cro-Magnon man living in France's Dordogne Valley some 15,000 years ago take time out from the desperate business of survival to paint pictures in inaccessible corners of his cave dwellings? NOVA joins French and American archeologists as they piece together the lifestyle of these hunters of the last great Ice Age, and try to interpret the meaning of their cave art.
Episode: 2x07 | Airdate: Dec 15, 1974
NOVA joins a group of English biologists living literally on a platform in the middle of the Red Sea, who for several years have been studying the crown-of-thorns starfish, notorious for the devastation it has wrought on the coral reefs of Australia and the Pacific.
Episode: 2x08 | Airdate: Jan 5, 1975
NOVA explores how science and technology play a major role in the design of weapons of war and the development of strategies for their use.
Episode: 2x09 | Airdate: Jan 12, 1975
Have you ever sensed that your body reacts differently at different times of the day? NOVA examines the best and worse times for work, good times for sex drives and your body's most reactive time of day for alcohol consumption.
Episode: 2x10 | Airdate: Jan 19, 1975
Has the case against DDT been proven? A strange question, perhaps, to be asking one year after the US has banned the insecticide, but NOVA dares to ask. Tracing the history of DDT from its discovery through its banning in the States, NOVA asks whether America overreacted with its total ban of this once acclaimed "wonder" chemical.
Episode: 2x11 | Airdate: Feb 2, 1975
NOVA profiles two very different scientists: Richard Feynman, a theoretical physicist, at the pinnacle of his career—a Nobel prizewinner; and Richard Lewontin, a biologist and highly regarded population geneticist from Harvard University.
Episode: 2x12 | Airdate: Feb 9, 1975
NOVA explores T.D. Lynsenko's rise to power in the Soviet Union in the early 20th century, and how it affected plant genetic research in the USSR.
Episode: 2x13 | Airdate: Feb 16, 1975
High in the Hoggar Mountains, in the exact center of the Sahara desert, lives Sidi Mohammed and his family: children, grandchildren, cousins and a few former slave women. Their environment, one of the most ungenerous on earth, provides them with almost nothing. NOVA examines the changing lifestyle of Sidi Mohammed.
Episode: 2x14 | Airdate: Mar 9, 1975
How likely is it that a terrorist group will steal plutonium intended for nuclear reactor fuel and put together a blackmail weapon of unprecedented power in the shape of a homemade atom bomb? That question is posed by Theodore Taylor, former A and H bomb designer at Los Alamos, in a recent book, The Curve of Binding Energy. NOVA investigates just how easy it would be to design a bomb using unclassified information.
Episode: 2x15 | Airdate: Mar 16, 1975
Since the Industrial Revolution, bigger has been better. NOVA profiles E.F. Schumacher, the author of Small is Beautiful, who thinks that enough is enough; that the time has come for technology to return to a human scale, where the ability to create is returned from the machine to people.
Episode: 2x16 | Airdate: Mar 30, 1975
Since the Industrial Revolution, bigger has been better. NOVA profiles E.F. Schumacher, the author of Small is Beautiful, who thinks that enough is enough; that the time has come for technology to return to a human scale, where the ability to create is returned from the machine to people.
Episode: 2x17 | Airdate: Apr 6, 1975
Fish is an excellent source of protein; it could help ease the growing international food shortage. But in 1972 the total world fish catch dropped. NOVA explores the possible reasons for this decline.
Season 3
Episode: 3x01 | Airdate: Jan 4, 1976
It is now possible to predict earthquakes. At least two successful predictions have already been made in the United States; and the NOVA crew was present and filming while a third prediction was being formulated. NOVA looks at why earthquakes occur, how predictions are made, the threat they pose to cities at risk, and examines the advantages and disadvantages of making an earthquake a predictable disaster.
Episode: 3x02 | Airdate: Jan 11, 1976
NOVA takes viewers into the world of Joey Deacon, 54 years old and a spastic since birth. Joey has lived most of his life in institutions, unable to communicate with anyone until he met Ernie Roberts. The docudrama recreates Joey's story, with remarkable performances by two spastic actors portraying him as a boy and as a young man. Joey and Ernie themselves appear in the final sequences.
Episode: 3x03 | Airdate: Jan 18, 1976
What do singer Peggy Lee, New York Jets Quarterback Joe Namath and Congressman Richard Nolas have in common? They all practice a ritual called TM—Transcendental Meditation. NOVA examines the recent phenomenal success of the TM movement in America.
Episode: 3x04 | Airdate: Jan 25, 1976
The last fourteen years have been a revolution in our understanding of our place in the stars, the Solar System. Beginning in 1961 with a Russian spacecraft flying to Venus, quickening with the Apollo manned missions to the Moon, it came of age in the Spring of 1974, when there were six spacecrafts traveling simultaneously from the Earth to the planets. NOVA looks at the era of manned and unmanned exploration of the Solar System.
Episode: 3x05 | Airdate: Feb 1, 1976
NOVA explores the mysterious ecosystem of the desert: a snowstorm; a lashing summer monsoon; and the emergence—in a pool created only minutes before—of a pair of adult spadefoot toads. Toads who had been waiting beneath the sand for a year for this brief and fortuitous moment to procreate the next generation...
Episode: 3x06 | Airdate: Feb 8, 1976
Every year, some 5,000 babies are born in the US with spina bifida, a congenital abnormality of the central nervous system. NOVA explores the mystery of what causes spina bifida and raises the issues of whether heroic measures should be taken to preserve the life of severely malformed babies.
Episode: 3x07 | Airdate: Feb 15, 1976
There's one place on earth where no one will ever catch a cold. And the freezing waters are so bitter there that a fish has been discovered to have developed its own anti-freeze. NOVA explores Antarctica—the coldest desert in the world.
Episode: 3x08 | Airdate: Mar 7, 1976
Author Isaac Asimov joins NOVA in the retelling of the remarkable story of the discovery of the structure of DNA. James Watson and his ex-colleague Francis Crick exchange memories of the events which led to their winning the race for the structure of the gene.
Episode: 3x09 | Airdate: Mar 7, 1976
Each Sunday edition of the New York Times consumes 153 acres of trees. The paper packs, napkins, paper cups and packing used by McDonald's gobble up 315 square miles of trees every day. NOVA asks if, at this rate, trees can remain a renewable resource.
Episode: 3x10 | Airdate: Mar 14, 1976
NOVA joins chief archaeologist, Ivor Noel Hume, of Colonial Williamsburg, VA, for a fascinating glimpse of the lifestyles of the founders of this country, complete with detailed reconstructions of houses, stores, workshops, gardens, taverns and palaces.
Episode: 3x11 | Airdate: Mar 21, 1976
NOVA joins chief archaeologist, Ivor Noel Hume, of Colonial Williamsburg, VA, for a fascinating glimpse of the lifestyles of the founders of this country, complete with detailed reconstructions of houses, stores, workshops, gardens, taverns and palaces.
Episode: 3x12 | Airdate: Apr 11, 1976
Dr. Norman Shumway of Stanford University has performed more heart transplants than any other heart surgeon. NOVA explores those extraordinary days in 1968-69 when it appeared that everyone with a scalpel was doing heart transplants, and survival of patients was measured in days.
Episode: 3x13 | Airdate: Apr 18, 1976
NOVA explores life underground, from foxes and badgers through moles and worms down to the myriad of micro-organisms that make soil the most complex substrate for life on earth. Included in the film is extraordinary footage of a mole burrowing and of roots growing.
Episode: 3x14 | Airdate: May 2, 1976
NOVA shows the Netsilik eskimoes of Pelly Bay and their traditional way of life and what happens when Western civilization is imposed upon them.
Episode: 3x15 | Airdate: May 9, 1976
Benjamin is a healthy, normal baby, whom we meet at birth and whose first year of life provides the backbone of this revealing NOVA about early child development.
Episode: 3x16 | Airdate: May 23, 1976
Margaret Sanger was responsible almost single-handedly for changing the whole attitude of the male-dominated medical profession towards "women's issues" and, above all, for gaining social and political acceptance for the concept of birth control. This NOVA docudrama reconstructs her life, told as flashbacks interspersed throughout an interview. Piper Laurie stars as Margaret Sanger.
Episode: 3x17 | Airdate: Jun 6, 1976
As late as 1967, smallpox struck as many as 15 million people in 43 countries and killed an estimated two or three million. Experts now believe that the disease is on the verge of extinction. NOVA looks at the recent success of the World Health Organization's program to eradicate this disease, considered a triumph of western-styled medicine.
Episode: 3x18 | Airdate: Jun 13, 1976
The "Jaws" phenomenon has given sharks a bad name. But is the shark really such a barbarian? NOVA looks at the lifestyle of this remarkable survivor from the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
Episode: 3x19 | Airdate: Jun 20, 1976
Recent scientific developments have made it possible to detect a wide variety of defects in unborn babies. NOVA focuses on the ethical question that must be considered: What defines a defect? Should defective babies be aborted, or should they be allowed to live?
Episode: 3x20 | Airdate: Jun 27, 1976
Since 1945, hundreds of ships and planes and thousands of people have mysteriously disappeared in an area of the Atlantic Ocean off of Florida, known as the Bermuda Triangle. NOVA penetrates the mystery of the terrifying Bermuda Triangle.
Season 4
Episode: 4x01 | Airdate: Jan 5, 1977
NOVA traces the development of Hitler's V-2 rocket through rare footage obtained from the National Archives—some never broadcast before on television.
Episode: 4x02 | Airdate: Jan 12, 1977
If you were a dinosaur scientist, what would you do with a pile of fossil bones? How would you even start to put the giant jigsaw puzzle together, never mind discover anything about how these dinosaurs lived? NOVA explores the incredible world of the dinosaur scientist.
Episode: 4x03 | Airdate: Jan 19, 1977
What is the price we are prepared to pay for coal? NOVA looks at the environmental and health safety issues raised by the government, industry, and the victims.
Episode: 4x04 | Airdate: Feb 2, 1977
NOVA explores the research on the 1976 drought in the western United States which led some solar scientists to discover the link between weather patterns and the 11 year sunspot mystery.
Episode: 4x05 | Airdate: Feb 9, 1977
NOVA follows the lives of three boys who have combined immunodeficiency—a disease that leaves its victims with no immune system.
Episode: 4x06 | Airdate: Feb 23, 1977
NOVA recreates March 1975 at Brown's Ferry, an Alabama nuclear power plant—the largest in the world—that suffered a seven-hour fire which came very close to developing into a major public disaster.
Episode: 4x07 | Airdate: Mar 2, 1977
NOVA looks at blackbirds, their winter habit of nesting in the millions, and the destruction they do to crops.
Episode: 4x08 | Airdate: Mar 9, 1977
NOVA profiles chemist Russell Marker who made the birth control pill possible by discovering a synthetic substitute for the hormone progesterone.
Episode: 4x09 | Airdate: Mar 16, 1977
NOVA explores the history of genetic engineering and the possible risks and benefits of this area of research.
Episode: 4x10 | Airdate: Mar 23, 1977
NOVA investigates the controversial theory of Harvard University biologist E.O. Wilson, that many aspects of human behavior are genetically determined.
Episode: 4x11 | Airdate: Mar 30, 1977
In the winter of 1976-77, 80 percent of the wolf population in Northwest Alaska was the target of aerial hunts. Although the area is roamed by the Western Arctic caribou herds—a natural predator of the wolf—the caribou population has been steadily decreasing in number. NOVA examines how the Dept. of Fish and Game is handling the the problem of wolf control.
Episode: 4x12 | Airdate: Apr 20, 1977
Solar energy is increasingly popular as a home heating source. But only recently has it been seriously considered as a source of industrial power. NOVA looks at this new industrial approach, such as the use of a huge windmill in Ohio, giant machines that may generate electricity from the heat of the tropical seas or from the motion of waves, and an orbiting solar power station able to beam microwaves to earth.
Episode: 4x13 | Airdate: Apr 20, 1977
NOVA explores the huge international illegal trade in animals, penetrates the thriving underworld of smugglers and assesses the effects on vanishing wildlife.
Episode: 4x14 | Airdate: Apr 27, 1977
NOVA traces 300 years of speculation, investigation and discovery that have centered on Mars—particularly the theory that the planet could support life. Questions raised by NASA's 1976 Viking mariner missions about how the vast canyons were formed are also explored.
Episode: 4x15 | Airdate: May 11, 1977
In part one of this two-part exploration of the diversity of world languages, NOVA examines how and why the bewildering confusion of languages came about.
Episode: 4x16 | Airdate: May 18, 1977
In part two of this two-part series on the diversity of language, NOVA explores how man has coped with the confusion of language and asks if the growing acceptance of English is the answer.
Episode: 4x17 | Airdate: Jun 1, 1977
NOVA profiles Linus Pauling—the only person to have received two unshared Nobel Prizes for his work in nuclear weapons.
Episode: 4x18 | Airdate: Jun 22, 1977
NOVA explores the different means by which hearing-impaired people have learned to penetrate the world of the hearing by visiting with Kitty O'Neil—a woman record-holding speed car racer; Frances Parsons, an advocate of hearing-impaired persons' rights; and workers at Silent Industries—a factory in Los Angeles founded by a deaf man.
Episode: 4x19 | Airdate: Jun 29, 1977
NOVA explores the debilitating diseases that are often caused by poverty and follows two paths to health care in Tanzania and the United States.
Episode: 4x20 | Airdate: Jan 11, 1978
Botany is a neglected science and plants are all around us, but unfamiliar. NOVA examines our state of knowledge of how plants work: growth hormones, responses to light and shade, photosynthesis, root mechanisms and twining responses.
Season 5
Episode: 5x01 | Airdate: Jan 4, 1978
Can a nuclear war be survived? Some members of the defense community say yes. NOVA explores the possibility.
Episode: 5x02 | Airdate: Jan 18, 1978
It has been known since the turn of the century that there are four human blood groups, based on different red cells and serum characteristics. NOVA looks at the more recent discovery that the different white cell types, as determined by a variety of different molecular markers on the cell surface, open up the possibility of the prevention of disease.
Episode: 5x03 | Airdate: Jan 25, 1978
Part one of a two-part series on the subject of man in space, NOVA examines the history of NASA—from the origin of the space race through the triumph of the Apollo programs. By tracing the history of three key programs—Mercury, Gemini, Apollo—we show how the basic challenges surrounding space flight were answered: rendezvous and docking, life support, weightlessness, space sickness, equipment reliability and so on.
Episode: 5x04 | Airdate: Feb 1, 1978
Second of the two-part series on space programs, NOVA looks ahead to the future, post-Apollo and the role that man in space will play, including the possibility of space colonization—huge orbiting space stations where people live and work in an earth atmosphere under artificial gravity.
Episode: 5x05 | Airdate: Feb 15, 1978
In the rain forests of Zaire, in the heart of Africa, live the Mbuti Pygmies. The Pygmy way of life has always been extraordinarily difficult to capture on film, though many have tried. NOVA presents a rare portrait of an elusive people, made by an independent filmmaker who lived with the Pygmies and won their trust.
Episode: 5x06 | Airdate: Feb 22, 1978
In a dramatic docudrama, NOVA reconstructs the controversial lawsuit raised against renowned heart surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley when one of his patients died after heart surgery, and examines the legal and moral issues this raises in the practice of modern medicine.
Episode: 5x07 | Airdate: Mar 1, 1978
A science-based revolution in the making of wine is underway. NOVA traces the secrets of the aging process and science's involvement with the predicting of mass production high-quality vintage wines.
Episode: 5x08 | Airdate: Mar 8, 1978
NOVA investigates the theories of von Daniken and others that the Earth has been visited by intelligent beings from outer space. Among claims examined are: that the building techniques used in the Great Pyramid of Cheops are so advanced that only an extraterrestrial intelligence could have built it; and that the engraved stones of Palenque in Mexico depict an ancient astronaut at the controls of a space rocket.
Episode: 5x09 | Airdate: Mar 22, 1978
Today's scientists may be creating their own successors. Work being done in Artificial Intelligence (AI), a branch of computer science, only suggest that in the not too distant future, machines will outpace their creators. NOVA examines the possibility.
Episode: 5x10 | Airdate: Mar 29, 1978
In the summer of 1977 Paul MacCready, a California scientist and businessman, won the coveted Kremer Prize. His achievement was to design and build an airplane which completed, unaided, a one-mile figure-eight course entirely under the power provided by the pilot himself. This is the story of those many failures and MacCready's success.
Episode: 5x11 | Airdate: Apr 12, 1978
NOVA shows a year in the life of a beaver pond and includes almost every life form that exists in, on, under, around and above the water, from the microscopic plant life of summer to the eagles feeding on carcasses of deer that collapsed on the winter ice.
Episode: 5x12 | Airdate: Apr 19, 1978
The fortified plateau above Athens known as the Acropolis is the site of some of the most remarkable architecture in the world: its marble structures built in the fifth century BC, including the renowned Parthenon, represent the artistic peak of classical Greek architecture. NOVA examines how the heavily polluted air of Athens produces acid rain which is dissolving the marble sculptures and columns; and how iron tiles used extensively in repair 40 years ago are now rusting, expanding and shattering the stone structures.
Episode: 5x13 | Airdate: May 3, 1978
Henry Ford, a great friend of Edison, was a film enthusiast who amassed some one and a half million feet of film during his lifetime. Deposited in the National Archives and known as the Ford Film Collection, it covers not only the Ford family and Ford Motor Company but also contains newsreels, and general films produced under Ford. Using the Collection, NOVA profiles Ford's life and times.
Episode: 5x14 | Airdate: May 10, 1978
When first invented 18 years ago, lasers were called "a solution looking for a problem;" nobody could think what to do with them. But in fact research scientists immediately began to exploit their pure colors and near-perfect focusing ability. Today lasers have grown into a billion-dollar business. They are used in construction, manufacturing, clothing, dentistry and medicine. And the future uses of lasers are likely to be of major significance as the means of achieving nuclear fusion and as a very high efficiency communications medium.
Episode: 5x15 | Airdate: May 24, 1978
In a world that each year loses up to 40 percent of its crops to insects, some form of pest control is desperately needed. But chemical pesticides have backfired. Pesticide-resistant insects frequently develop, and previously harmless insects have become devastating infestations. Farmers have found themselves trapped on a "pesticide treadmill"—the more they spray, the more they have to spray. NOVA examines several alternatives for pest control.
Episode: 5x16 | Airdate: May 31, 1978
For thousands of years people have managed to live in deserts all over the world. But in recent years, a growing population and the demands of the international market have put more stress on these poor and easily exhausted lands. NOVA examines the consequences and possible solutions to desertification.
Episode: 5x17 | Airdate: Jun 7, 1978
NOVA explores Bovine sleeping sickness. Spread by a fly, it is a deadly disease that poses a threat to Africa's cattle.
Episode: 5x18 | Airdate: Jun 14, 1978
Traditionally zoos were designed neither for people nor animals; barred cages taught people more about their separation from nature than about an animal and its habitat. But just as man has realized that he has all but destroyed much of the world's wilderness and its wildlife, he is realizing that the zoo may be the last refuge for wildlife. NOVA visits several United States zoos to examine a variety of activities of concern today: breeding, public education, creative new animal habitats, and the reintroduction of animals to their natural environment.
Episode: 5x19 | Airdate: Jun 21, 1978
In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, two radio astronomers at Bell Telephone Laboratories, discovered faint, but ever-present, microwave signals from space—the most ancient and most distant signals detected by man: the oldest "fossils" in the universe. NOVA explores the current surge of cosmological discovery that continues to aid scientists in the "cosmic archaeology" of digging into the history of the universe.
Episode: 5x20 | Airdate: Jun 28, 1978
Congress is currently considering a proposal that would double the size of America's national park system by designating a sizeable chunk of Alaska as off-limits to developers. NOVA explores the public debates on Alaska, such as the construction of the oil pipeline—a proposal that has sparked a bitter controversy between conservationists and developers.
Season 6
Episode: 6x01 | Airdate: Jan 4, 1979
On the morning of March 16, 1978, the US owned, Liberian registered supertanker, the Amoco Cadiz, went aground off the coast of Brittany. Over the following days and weeks its entire 68 million gallons of oil drained into the sea. A NOVA production team began filmming at the scene shortly after the disaster, the biggest oil spill in history, and recorded clean-up efforts, effects of the spill on the crucial tourism and fishing industries, and the attempts of US and French marine biologists to trace the passage of the oil through the environment.
Episode: 6x02 | Airdate: Jan 11, 1979
As a child, Fred Young hunted birds and wild animals with primitive weapons, spoke only the Indian languages Ute and Navajo, went to a medicine man when he was sick, and slept under the stars. NOVA profiles Dr. Frederick Young, now a nuclear physicist working on the laser fusion project at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico.
Episode: 6x03 | Airdate: Jan 18, 1979
In 1945, B.F. Skinner shocked the world by putting his 13 month-old daughter, Deborah, into a 'box.' The box was actually a climate-controlled crib designed for comfort and protection, and the young psychologist was merely testing his theory that environment controls behavior. NOVA portrays the life of this famous behavioral psychologist now in his 70's and living quietly in Cambridge as Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.
Episode: 6x04 | Airdate: Feb 1, 1979
The bed of the northeast Pacific Ocean is covered with a "carpet" estimated to be worth a staggering ten million dollars. These manganese nodules—the bumpy carpet—are rich not only in manganese but in the key strategic minerals: copper, nickel and cobalt. NOVA examines the debate about who owns them and who has the right to exploit their use.
Episode: 6x05 | Airdate: Feb 8, 1979
Below the snow-capped peaks of the Peruvian Andes, the Q'eros Indians live a life patterned on that of their ancestors thousands of years ago. NOVA takes a look at the unchanging world of these isolated mountain people.
Episode: 6x06 | Airdate: Feb 22, 1979
Some day hydrogen may replace the gasoline that we are now using up so rapidly. NOVA looks at the potential of hydrogen as a zero-pollution fuel.
Episode: 6x07 | Airdate: Mar 1, 1979
Is nuclear fusion the solution to the energy crisis? NOVA examines the promise—and problems—of fusion as a future energy source.
Episode: 6x08 | Airdate: Mar 8, 1979
Health care is the third largest industry in the US. As a result of billions of dollars spent for medical education in the 1960s, there are now too many specialists and too few primary care physicians, especially in underserved areas. NOVA tells the story of one medical school in Israel that is training a new kind of family doctor.
Episode: 6x09 | Airdate: Mar 15, 1979
One hundred years after his birth, Albert Einstein remains an enigma to most Americans. NOVA presents an insightful portrait of the man and his mind through rarely viewed film footage.
Episode: 6x10 | Airdate: Mar 29, 1979
Episode: 6x11 | Airdate: Oct 2, 1979
Is the chemical industry a boom to modern civilization, or a major threat to our health and that of future generations? NOVA examines how toxic heribicides, pesticides, and other chemicals may cause cancer, miscarriages and birth defects in humans.
Episode: 6x12 | Airdate: Oct 9, 1979
Sinister, sometimes even deadly, spiders have little popular appeal; yet their silken webs are among nature's loveliest creations. NOVA takes a close-look in slow motion, as spiders reveal a delicate grace and beauty, and an amazing array of lifestyles.
Episode: 6x13 | Airdate: Oct 16, 1979
NOVA views the history of sugar—from its scientific, religious and political history to its medical controversy.
Episode: 6x14 | Airdate: Oct 30, 1979
At the 1976 Olympics, East German athletes walked off with 40 of the coveted gold medals, though their country is only the size of New Jersey. NOVA investigates whether a drug responsible for their incredible success—or is American athletic training and commitment falling behind that of the Communist world?
Episode: 6x15 | Airdate: Nov 6, 1979
Thousands of amateur athletes are hurt every year, and many professional athletes suffer injuries that may mean the end of a career. NOVA looks at a new medical specialty—sports medicine—that promises to prevent and cure many sports related problems.
Episode: 6x16 | Airdate: Nov 20, 1979
Most of India lives by the same rhythm, the same tools, as in centuries past. But there is another India—with thriving commercial centers, spotless research laboratories and large-scale industry. NOVA looks at how the gap between these two extremes is shrinking because of a policy of "appropriate" technology that uses the resources of both to meet the greatest needs of all.
Episode: 6x17 | Airdate: Dec 4, 1979
The Iron Bridge across the River Severn in Telford, England is two centuries old this year. It remains a monument to the Shropshire iron masters who built it, and a symbol of the Industrial Revolution that was born in the area where the bridge stands. NOVA traces the development of ironmaking and its far-reaching effects on society and the world economy.
Episode: 6x18 | Airdate: Dec 11, 1979
Dr. Philip Morrison, Institute Professor and Professor of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presents this thoughtful and provocative commentary on the nature of civilization.
Episode: 6x19 | Airdate: Dec 18, 1979
For many people the idea of life without vision is as fearful as death. NOVA looks at five people struggling to save their threatened vision using drugs, surgery, counseling and determination.
Season 7
Episode: 7x01 | Airdate: Jan 15, 1980
Aborigines in Australia, woodchucks in Pennsylvania, the Nobel Prize in Stockholm and the gay community in New York—what could possibily link such disparate elements? The answer is Hepatitis. NOVA examines this elusive disease, what causes it, how it is spread and how you get rid of it.
Episode: 7x02 | Airdate: Jan 22, 1980
NOVA profiles Dr. Edward Teller, the "Father of the Hydrogen Bomb," an acclaimed scientific genius and brilliant theoretician, and a man considered by some the most dangerous scientist in the United States.
Episode: 7x03 | Airdate: Feb 5, 1980
NOVA explores the science of natural engineering and asks the basic questions: what makes a good design in nature and why did a particular plant or animal adopt a particular design?
Episode: 7x04 | Airdate: Feb 19, 1980
More than 40 million Americans are afflicted by cardiovascular disease. NOVA examines the new information on risk factors and possible prevention of heart attacks and strokes—often fatal diseases.
Episode: 7x05 | Airdate: Mar 4, 1980
Whaling is an integral part of Eskimo life, and a major source of food; even so, conservationists are seeking to restrict the hunting of bowheads in Alaska.
Episode: 7x06 | Airdate: Mar 11, 1980
Recent aircraft accidents have raised the question of just how safe modern commercial aviation really is. NOVA looks at some of the problems and experimental efforts underway to deal with them.
Episode: 7x07 | Airdate: Mar 18, 1980
Every year, millions of tourists converge on the Mediterranean's sunny coasts, lured by the prospect of bathing in clear, azure waters and basking in semi-tropical sun. But years of use and abuse have taken their toll on the once idyllic Mediterranean and the "world's biggest swimming pool" has become the world's biggest open sewer. NOVA explores the complex problems that plague the Mediterranean's future.
Episode: 7x08 | Airdate: Mar 25, 1980
NOVA explores the amazing Jari project of the Amazon basin. Eleven years ago, 3.5 million acres of virgin jungle were bought by the reclusive billionaire, Daniel K. Ludwig.
Episode: 7x09 | Airdate: Sep 30, 1980
NOVA explores the shaping and molding of the male and female personality. From infancy through childhood, the program documents the impact of culture on the development of sex differences.
Episode: 7x10 | Airdate: Oct 7, 1980
In one of the first films ever to come out of modern China, NOVA sifts through clues that Chinese scientists have uncovered in their pursuit of particularly virulent and elusive forms of cancer from which one out of every four people die.
Episode: 7x11 | Airdate: Oct 14, 1980
One year in the intricate life of a coastal lagoon unfolds in an hour's time when NOVA documents the fragile tidal ecosystem which supports the entire ocean.
Episode: 7x12 | Airdate: Oct 28, 1980
Locked in the shale of the Western Rocky Mountains is more oil than in the Middle East—more than enough to solve our dependence on foreign crude oil. But will shale oil solve our gasoline shortage, or will it simply turn the Rockies into a gigantic industrial zone? NOVA explores the promise and the problems of shale oil.
Episode: 7x13 | Airdate: Nov 4, 1980
Is interferon—known as IF in medical shorthand—the wonder drug and cure for cancer that some doctors claim? NOVA travels to London, Stockholm, Houston, San Francisco, and New Haven in search of the answer in the most complete film on interferon ever to appear on American television.
Episode: 7x14 | Airdate: Nov 11, 1980
On Wednesday, November 12, 1980, Voyager 1 is expected to arrive at Saturn for a first time ever extensive close-up investigation of the majestic ringed planet. Astronomers can expect to gather more information than ever before possible. On the day before this historic event, NOVA documents Voyager's journey through the outer solar system.
Episode: 7x15 | Airdate: Nov 18, 1980
Thomas Edison is the quintessential American hero, the Wizard whose inventions revolutionized modern living. But there was always more to Edison than met the eye. He was a complex and contradictory man; a brilliant inventor, a foolish investor; a demanding boss, a liberal benfactor—a public figure that no one ever really knew. NOVA profiles the man behind the mythical reputation.
Episode: 7x16 | Airdate: Nov 25, 1980
Water, water everywhere...but just how useful is it? NOVA travels to the Adirondack Mountains where acid rain is killing many high elevation lakes; to the Mississippi River where chlorine has combined with natural and manmade organic chemicals to form cancer-causing toxic chemical susbtances; to California, where conservation recycling has had to become a way of life; and to Bedford, Massachusetts, where the town wells have been contaminated by industrial waste.
Episode: 7x17 | Airdate: Dec 2, 1980
NOVA tells the story of still and cine photography in science—from the extraordinary work of the pioneers in the early 1800s to how the ability to freeze time on film in ever shorter periods has given scientists remarkable new insights. Today photography enables us to analyze (frame by frame) the thousands of molecular reactions that can happen in less time than the blink of an eye.
Episode: 7x18 | Airdate: Dec 9, 1980
The exquisite sensitivity of tough cells in the human skin makes it possible for us to discriminate with precision the slightest changes in texture and pressure, but how the electrical impulses we receive are converted into sensation remains a mystery. NOVA explores the hidden meaning and extraordinary power of human touch.
Episode: 7x19 | Airdate: Dec 23, 1980
The cuddly image of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has become an integral part of the jollity of the Christmas season. NOVA takes a timely look at how real deer live by visiting Rhum—an island off the coast of Scotland inhabited by red deer.
Episode: 7x20 | Airdate: Dec 30, 1980
Time—a concept which has baffled scientists and philosophers since time immemorial. Actor Dudley Moore hosts a funny, sobering and visually stunning quest for answers to riddles, as NOVA spends an hour on time.
Season 8
Episode: 8x01 | Airdate: Jan 6, 1981
Is the fagara root a match for the stethoscope? This program looks at the contributions of both traditional herbal medicine and western orthodox medicine to the health of the Nigerian people.
Episode: 8x02 | Airdate: Jan 20, 1981
This program explores clues gathered from ancient rocks and meteorites in an attempt to piece together how our planet formed, what happened during its earliest days, and when life first appeared. The program includes visits to the scene of a fresh fall of meteorites, several volcanic eruptions, and an underwater glimpse of molten "pillow" lava as it oozes out of volcanic vents in the sea floor.
Episode: 8x03 | Airdate: Jan 27, 1981
NOVA examines the Dead Sea. The lowest place on earth, at 1400 feet below sea level, it is jointly owned by Israel and Jordan. If used properly it could become a vital natural resource for both countries, giving them not only salt, but protein, fertilizer, oil, and a solar energy store.
Episode: 8x04 | Airdate: Feb 10, 1981
When Mt. St. Helens erupted earlier this year, it focused the attention of the whole world on the almost incredible destructive forces that volcanos can release. Geologists from around the world congregated at the volcano and NOVA joined the vigil for an in-depth look at the incident and its aftermath.
Episode: 8x05 | Airdate: Feb 17, 1981
NOVA investigates what science can do in helping to solve murder—in understanding why it occurs, and how the rate might be reduced—and explores the work of people who have the stark job of dealing with death: the police, pathologist, scientists and psychiatrists.
Episode: 8x06 | Airdate: Feb 24, 1981
NOVA investigates what science can do in helping to solve murder—in understanding why it occurs, and how the rate might be reduced—and explores the work of people who have the stark job of dealing with death: the police, pathologist, scientists and psychiatrists.
Episode: 8x07 | Airdate: Mar 3, 1981
Sophisticated instruments used by astronomers enable earthlings to see beyond what was once the cloudy barrier of the Milky Way, to a universe of perhaps 100 billion other galaxies. NOVA takes a trip into outer space to see these clusters which are as old as time and several million light years away.
Episode: 8x08 | Airdate: Mar 10, 1981
For 150 million years, dinosaurs dominated the earth. Then, 65 million years ago, they suddenly vanished, along with a great deal of the planet's animal and plant life. NOVA examines a remarkable theory about the cause of the catastrophe—in which the first clue to the solution was a piece of clay.
Episode: 8x09 | Airdate: Mar 17, 1981
The beauty, endurance, and raw power of animals in the wild are captured on film as NOVA juxtaposes Olympic athletes performing feats which have parallels in the animal kingdom with animals who are the champions of grace and strength.
Episode: 8x10 | Airdate: Aug 28, 1981
It's over 300 years since Galileo turned his new telescope on Saturn and first saw its spectacular rings. NOVA shows the beauty and new mysteries discovered by Voyager 1 on its historic visit.
Episode: 8x11 | Airdate: Sep 27, 1981
NOVA reports on the potential danger of modern computers that gather "routine" information about our daily lives as we buy things, go to the hospital, or make donations. Computers can know more about us than our closest friends. NOVA examines how much of that personal information is readily shared with other computers.
Episode: 8x12 | Airdate: Oct 4, 1981
More people die in fires in the US than in any other industrialized country. In an alarming report that challenges the complacency of the US fire prevention establishment, NOVA uncovers glaring gaps in our defenses against flames that kill. Sealing any one of these gaps might save thousands of lives and prevent enormous pain and misery.
Episode: 8x13 | Airdate: Oct 11, 1981
A great secret lies locked inside the master violins created by Italian craftsmen like Antonio Stradivari in the 17th and 18th centuries. Now, a Wisconsin physicist, working alone in his cellar, may have solved the violin mystery.
Episode: 8x14 | Airdate: Oct 18, 1981
A NOVA showing the extraordinary discoveries of X-ray astronomy. This new science has revealed that our universe is much stranger and more violent than ever imagined, filled with neutrons, stars, exploding galaxies, quasars and black holes—a universe seething with energy, bursting across vast distances of space and time.
Episode: 8x15 | Airdate: Oct 25, 1981
Called the "teeth of the wind" by those who have battled them for centuries, locusts continue to plague hundreds of millions of people. Rare desert rains transforms locusts from harmless grasshoppers to voracious swarms capable of destroying all vegetation in their path. NOVA reveals some of man's latest attempts to rid himself of his age-old enemy, the locust.
Episode: 8x16 | Airdate: Nov 1, 1981
The controversy which exploded a century ago when Charles Darwin published "The Origin of Species" is erupting again with new facts and emotion. NOVA explores challenges to the theory of evolution coming from evidence in fossils, from biology laboratories, and Creationists.
Episode: 8x17 | Airdate: Nov 15, 1981
Many were delighted by the extraordinary special effects in movies like "2001" and" Star Wars," but few realized how their magic relied on technologies as futuristic as their science fiction plots. NOVA introduces 20th century pioneers who use computers and lasers to create an extraordinary array of strange, exciting new art forms.
Episode: 8x18 | Airdate: Nov 22, 1981
You are not alone! Like it or not, every human being and virtually every living creature is, in a sense, owned and operated by legions of prehistoric organisms, hordes of them in each cell in the body. That is one of the startling revelations as NOVA explores the mysterious wonder of life with Dr. Lewis Thomas, a leading biologist and award-winning author described by Time as "quite possibly the best essayist on science anywhere in the world."
Episode: 8x19 | Airdate: Nov 29, 1981
William H. Whyte's insightful and humorous look at city parks, plazas and streets, and the people who use them. Whyte shows the remarkable research he did over a period of many years to find out why some city squares and small parks are enjoyable while others are so dreary. His work led to the transformation of some New York City plazas from barren to bustling. Whyte shows how any city—large or small—can lick the problem of downtown dreariness.
Episode: 8x20 | Airdate: Dec 6, 1981
Ever thought what it's like having your mirror image talk back to you? It can be an everyday occurrence for identical twins. NOVA tells the incredible story of scientific research on twins—a field marked by brazen and damaging fraud, but also by surprising and important new discoveries about nature's recipe of heredity and environment which makes us all unique individuals.
Season 9
Episode: 9x01 | Airdate: Jan 10, 1982
NOVA captures the breathtaking power and determination of these amazing creatures and examines how business and technology are changing the fishing industry—and the salmon itself.
Episode: 9x02 | Airdate: Jan 17, 1982
NOVA presents a dramatic, exclusive film of the first "test-tube" baby born in America, Elizabeth Jordan Carr. NOVA follows the pregnancy from the start, presenting the only view on American TV of the extraordinary medical procedures used to remove and fertilize the egg, and of the historic birth, December 28, 1981 in Norfolk, VA.
Episode: 9x03 | Airdate: Jan 24, 1982
NOVA takes an intimate look at Robert Tory Peterson, the man whose best-selling guide books to ornithology have played a pivotal role in turning bird watching into a mass sport.
Episode: 9x04 | Airdate: Jan 31, 1982
One of the biggest investigations in medical history began when a mysterious killer disease broke out during independence celebrations in Philadelphia in 1976: Legionnaire's Disease. NOVA traces the search for a cause and cure—a search bedeviled by false trails, accusations of incompetence and cover-up, and increasing urgency as the death toll mounted.
Episode: 9x05 | Airdate: Feb 7, 1982
What is it like not to be able to communicate with others? NOVA explores the severest of speech disabilities with Dick Boydell—born with cerebral palsy, confined to a wheel chair and unable for 30 years to say more than "yes" or "no" and investigates some of the new technology that gives the speechless a "voice."
Episode: 9x06 | Airdate: Feb 14, 1982
NOVA explores the past, present, and future of American television including the potential of cable, the Columbus, Ohio, two-way TV experiment, the array of new techniques and their potential social impact. Will the new video technology let people see what they really want, rather than what the networks want?
Episode: 9x07 | Airdate: Feb 28, 1982
NOVA shows how scientists go about creating new forms of life, and investigates the impact of the gene bonanza on industry, medicine, and the universities themselves. NOVA reveals that other countries are plowing far more resources than the US into the burgeoning industry.
Episode: 9x08 | Airdate: Mar 7, 1982
NOVA visits San Francisco's Exploratorium—part laboratory, part school, part three-ring circus—run by an unlikely collection of physicists and high school students.
Episode: 9x09 | Airdate: Mar 14, 1982
In this vivid study of mimicry and camouflage NOVA shows dramatically how snakes, butterflies, fish, turtles and many other kinds of animals, both predators and their intended victims, use remarkable forms of deception to achieve their goal: to eat, or avoid being eaten.
Episode: 9x10 | Airdate: Mar 28, 1982
What is aging? Why does it happen? Can it be stopped? NOVA presents a startling report on research into the processes which make us age and how to control them.
Episode: 9x11 | Airdate: Oct 12, 1982
For the first time on television a rigorous, scientific investigation into the fact, fiction, and hoax of unidentified flying objects. With vivid film and accounts from several eyewitnesses including astronauts, NOVA sifts the evidence for and against the existence of UFOs.
Episode: 9x12 | Airdate: Oct 19, 1982
The Himalayas, highest peaks in the world, are crumbling. People are making them crumble, and people are the victims, as NOVA reveals in this breathtaking documentary.
Episode: 9x13 | Airdate: Nov 9, 1982
Of the 70,000 Americans hospitalized annually for severe burns, one-third are children. NOVA tells the story of extraordinary personal resilience in an 11-year-old boy's fight to recover from burns suffered over 73 percent of his body.
Episode: 9x14 | Airdate: Nov 16, 1982
NOVA introduces some of the winners of the 1982 Westinghouse Science Talent Search: high school students whose interests range from silkworms to solar cells. With education facing a deepening financial crisis, will this year's group of well-trained young scientists be among the last of the best and the brightest?
Episode: 9x15 | Airdate: Nov 23, 1982
An investigative report on US dependence on foreign sources of strategic minerals, vital to the aerospace and steel industries, which examines and questions Reagan Administration policies toward those international sources.
Episode: 9x16 | Airdate: Nov 30, 1982
NOVA reports on the staggering water problems of Southern Louisiana—where the mighty Mississippi is threatening to change its course, and where last year 49 square miles of coastline disappeared into the Gulf of Mexico.
Episode: 9x17 | Airdate: Dec 7, 1982
NOVA follows the great grey whales along their annual marathon migration from the Arctic to the Mexican coast and reveals little known facts about the mating and feeding habits of the gentle giants.
Episode: 9x18 | Airdate: Dec 14, 1982
While America's passenger-train service deteriorates, trains in Japan and Europe are speeding ahead at over 150 miles per hour. NOVA reports that the super-fast trains are finally coming to America.
Season 10
Episode: 10x01 | Airdate: Jan 18, 1983
This land of fire and beauty is the most isolated island chain in the world. NOVA cameras uncover an extraordinary world far from the teeming tourist hotels, one filled with unique life forms, but also scarred by tragic extinction.
Episode: 10x02 | Airdate: Jan 25, 1983
NOVA captivates a remarkably candid portrait of Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, a man of few pretensions and tremendous personal charm, who speaks with the same passion about a child's toy wagon and the frontiers of subatomic physics.
Episode: 10x03 | Airdate: Feb 8, 1983
A gripping docudrama about a mysterious, highly lethal disease which struck a village in Nigeria in 1969, and the frustrating, seesaw battle against it. NOVA recounts how public health workers came perilously close to accidentally releasing a deadly virus in the US.
Episode: 10x04 | Airdate: Feb 15, 1983
NOVA presents the first film ever made of the incredible chain of events which turns a sperm and an egg into a newborn baby. Amazing photographic techniques give the viewers the feeling of being reduced to the size of cells, following the sperm on its perilous voyage toward the egg, and meeting protectors and enemies along the way—like Ulysses on a microscopic odyssey.
Episode: 10x05 | Airdate: Mar 1, 1983
Every 58 minutes between now and the end of the century, one American will die from asbestos exposure. NOVA turns its spotlight on the tragic consequences of asbestos use and on the current controversy over who is responsible.
Episode: 10x06 | Airdate: Mar 8, 1983
NOVA takes a spellbinding voyage through one of the world's most fascinating and colorful ecosystems: a coral reef, where the line between plants and animals is blurred, "rocks" move, eat and fight, fish farm, and weak animals borrow the shields and weapons of stronger ones.
Episode: 10x07 | Airdate: Mar 22, 1983
"Why can't I lose weight?" It's a question many Americans ask themselves everyday. NOVA comes up with some surprising answers about weight and dieting that could have significant impact on our daily lives.
Episode: 10x08 | Airdate: Mar 29, 1983
The accident at Three Mile Island made front page news all over the world and rocked the entire nuclear power industry. In this special 90-minute broadcast, NOVA presents a docudrama chronicling the minute-by-minute events leading up to the accident and examines the questions raised about safety confronting nuclear power industry today.
Episode: 10x09 | Airdate: Oct 11, 1983
The dream of talking with animals has been with us for centuries. NOVA explores the latest research, from language experiments with dolphins and apes to studies of animal calls in the wild.
Episode: 10x10 | Airdate: Oct 18, 1983
Seattle dentist Barney Clark received the first complete artificial heart implant in 1982 and lived on for three post-operative months. NOVA investigates the risk, costs and controversies surrounding the development of the artificial heart.
Episode: 10x11 | Airdate: Oct 25, 1983
NOVA looks at computers in the classroom through the eyes of MIT's Seymour Papert, father of the Turtle—a computerized robot that crawls on the floor and talks in versatile language even five-year-olds can learn.
Episode: 10x12 | Airdate: Nov 1, 1983
Remote tribes and exotic islanders have been made known to the world through the lens of anthropology. But in recent years, some of these people have begun to object. NOVA travels to Margaret Mead's Papua New Guinea and looks at anthropology from the other side.
Episode: 10x13 | Airdate: Nov 8, 1983
Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross has become a legend in her lifetime for her work with the dying. For the first time on American television, her explorations with patients are captured in film, as NOVA presents an intimate portrait of the Swiss-born psychiatrist at work.
Episode: 10x14 | Airdate: Nov 15, 1983
Can the thoroughbred horse run any faster? NOVA examines the billion-dollar horse racing industry in its search for the magic combination of speed, stamina and the will to win.
Episode: 10x15 | Airdate: Nov 22, 1983
When plastic surgeons repair the shattered face of a soldier or rescue a child from a disfiguring disease, the victory is more than skin-deep. NOVA looks at the history, heroes and miracles of plastic surgery in mending the accidents of war and birth.
Episode: 10x16 | Airdate: Nov 25, 1983
Patients at an Australian institution for the severely handicapped rebel against a pair of over-zealous custodians. This astonishing true story was filmed as a docudrama, written and performed by the patients themselves.
Episode: 10x17 | Airdate: Dec 6, 1983
As the American space program celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, NOVA chronicles the effects of the space age on earth, drawing on popular music, film and television archives from the last quarter of a century.
Episode: 10x18 | Airdate: Dec 13, 1983
As the American space program celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, NOVA chronicles the effects of the space age on earth, drawing on popular music, film and television archives from the last quarter of a century.
Episode: 10x19 | Airdate: Dec 20, 1983
This summer's record temperatures may be one of the signs that the earth's atmosphere is warming up. NOVA looks at the climate predictions and hazard warnings for the next century, based on the effects of our soaring consumption of fossil fuels.
Episode: 10x20 | Airdate: Dec 27, 1983
NOVA documents a dramatic encounter in international medicine when an American plane lands in China—equipped with a state-of-the-art eye-operating theater—and two very different medical systems meet eyeball to eyeball.
Episode: 10x21 | Airdate: Jan 10, 1984
In a culture laced with alcohol, the search for a scientific understanding of alcoholism is as complex as the disease. In an interdisciplinary report, NOVA looks at the many faces of alcoholism—medical, historical and social.
Season 11
Episode: 11x01 | Airdate: Jan 17, 1984
In the past decade, a number of researchers have begun systematic laboratory research into extrasensory perception—ESP. NOVA considers the claims for—and against—paranormal phenomena and looks at some startling applications in the field of archaeology, criminology and warfare.
Episode: 11x02 | Airdate: Jan 31, 1984
An astronaut once observed a great white light shining out from the bottom of our world: Antarctica, the ice-covered continent we are only just beginning to understand. NOVA visits this wilderness of ice, larger than the United States and Mexico combined, whose only warm-blooded residents are seals, skuas, penguins and scientists.
Episode: 11x03 | Airdate: Feb 14, 1984
Efforts to control the population explosion are among the burning controversies of our time. NOVA looks at the one-child policy of the People's Republic of China, a revolutionary decree with profound implications for a people accustomed to traditionally large families.
Episode: 11x04 | Airdate: Feb 28, 1984
Is there a cure for paralyzing spinal injuries? Most neurosurgeons are doubtful, pointing to the central nervous system's most apparent inability to heal itself. But others dispute the point. NOVA explores the debate, the hopes for a cure and recent breakthroughs to help paralyzed patients.
Episode: 11x05 | Airdate: Mar 6, 1984
Is there a cure for paralyzing spinal injuries? Most neurosurgeons are doubtful, pointing to the central nervous system's most apparent inability to heal itself. But others dispute the point. NOVA explores the debate, the hopes for a cure and recent breakthroughs to help paralyzed patients.
Episode: 11x06 | Airdate: Mar 20, 1984
Agriculture is America's biggest industry. This productivity, envied around the world, is also depleting the most essential ingredients in farming: water and soil. NOVA looks at the agricultural dilemma, the short term need for profit and long term needs of the land.
Episode: 11x07 | Airdate: Mar 27, 1984
What are America's obligations to its native population? As an important Indian health act comes up for renewal in Congress this Spring (1984), NOVA explores the state of medical care for a proud but vulnerable minority.
Episode: 11x08 | Airdate: Apr 30, 1984
Victor Weisskoff: physicist, lover of music and citizen of the world. NOVA profiles the international statesman of science and learns that one of the giants of 20th century physics is also one of the country's greatest humanists.
Episode: 11x09 | Airdate: Oct 2, 1984
At a time when scientific exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union is at its lowest since the 1950s, a special hookup will allow eight leading Soviet and American scientists to share ideas face-to-face before millions of television viewers in each country on this NOVA special.
Episode: 11x10 | Airdate: Oct 16, 1984
NOVA departs from tradition with the first National Science Test. Viewers can match wits with celebrity panelists Jane Alexander, Jules Bergman, Marva Collins and Edwin Newman. Art Fleming hosts.
Episode: 11x11 | Airdate: Oct 20, 1984
NOVA explores the billion-dollar-plus Mahaweli Irrigation Project in Sri Lanka. Will this high-risk project prove to be a great leap forward or an industrial and sociological disaster?
Episode: 11x12 | Airdate: Oct 30, 1984
NOVA explores whether "yellow rain," described by members of the Hmong tribe of Laos, is a form of chemical warfare—or a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Episode: 11x13 | Airdate: Nov 6, 1984
NOVA visits a tribe of Ecuadoran Indians who still maintain traditions that date back to the Stone Age—thirty years after their first contact with Western Civilization.
Episode: 11x14 | Airdate: Nov 13, 1984
NOVA looks at the "blue revolution"—modern advances in the ancient art of raising aquatic animals and plants—in the United States, Japan, Scotland and other countries.
Episode: 11x15 | Airdate: Nov 20, 1984
NOVA's sequel to "A Normal Face" examines the merging of technology and art in modern reconstruction and cosmetic surgical techniques.
Episode: 11x16 | Airdate: Nov 27, 1984
They have been part of the United States' space program for more than 20 years. Who are these talented, courageous women? NOVA looks at astronaut Sally Ride and her colleagues, how they are trained and their role in NASA's future.
Episode: 11x17 | Airdate: Dec 4, 1984
Acclaimed underwater cameraman Al Giddings takes NOVA viewers beneath the waves to explore the fact and fiction surrounding the Great White Shark.
Episode: 11x18 | Airdate: Dec 11, 1984
The debate over acid rain continues to grow. NOVA travels to West Germany, the mid-Atlantic states and New England to examine the controversy surrounding this phenomenon.
Episode: 11x19 | Airdate: Dec 18, 1984
What do dinosaurs, a panda's thumb and a peacock's tail have in common? Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, the internationally renowned paleontologist and evolutionary theorist, provides some surprising answers in this NOVA profile.
Episode: 11x20 | Airdate: Jan 8, 1985
In this docudrama presentation, NOVA looks at the life, times and work of Gregor Mendel, the 19th century Augustinian friar whose revolutionary scientific experiments in selective breeding have made him the "Father of Genetics."
Season 12
Episode: 12x01 | Airdate: Jan 15, 1985
NOVA explores the fascinating world of Dr. Harold Edgerton, electronics wizard and inventor extraordinaire, whose invention of the electronic strobe, a "magic lamp," has enabled the human eye to see the unseen.
Episode: 12x02 | Airdate: Jan 22, 1985
NOVA presents an in-depth look at India's attempt to use satellite technology to leapfrog into the era of space-age communication and whether it brings benefit or blight to India's villages and rural areas.
Episode: 12x03 | Airdate: Jan 29, 1985
NOVA examines the complex world of parasites, parasitic diseases and the exciting work currently being done by a new breed of medical researchers as they meet the challenge of conquering the world's number one medical problem.
Episode: 12x04 | Airdate: Feb 5, 1985
A rare look at the beautiful and desolate Wrangel Island-a Soviet possession 300 miles off the coast of Alaska-as seen through the eyes of Soviet Filmmaker and naturalist Yuri Ledin. Wrangel Island is not only the home to Siberian snow geese, polar foxes and walruses, but serves as the world's largest denning area for polar bears.
Episode: 12x05 | Airdate: Feb 12, 1985
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, is a deadly disease that has struck down some 2,000 people in the four years since its discovery. NOVA examines how modern science has been unraveling the mystery of this baffling ailment.
Episode: 12x06 | Airdate: Feb 19, 1985
Sea shells, crystals, honeycombs, eggs and seeds: They are shaped the way they are for a reason. NOVA takes viewers on a unique journey of discovery to find out why things are shaped the way they are and why they work so well.
Episode: 12x07 | Airdate: Feb 26, 1985
It's a mystery just how children acquire language. Does the process begin in the womb? And which comes first, language or thought? NOVA explores the fascinating world of baby talk and reveals the latest theories on this remarkable achievement.
Episode: 12x08 | Airdate: Mar 5, 1985
Imagine a bottle with no inside or a number bigger than infinity or parallel lines that meet. Welcome to the world of pure mathematics. NOVA offers a look into a wholly abstract, quirky world of mathematics.
Episode: 12x09 | Airdate: Mar 12, 1985
What do Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the painter Raphael and chess champion Bobby Fischer have in common? They were all child prodigies. NOVA explores the current efforts to learn more about the nature of giftedness.
Episode: 12x10 | Airdate: Mar 19, 1985
NOVA explores the breeding, migration and survival patterns of the Rocky Mountain elk in a unique film, made totally under natural conditions. Telephoto lenses were used so as not to disturb the animals; filmmakers spent 18 months tracking the elk through the breathtaking Wyoming Rockies.
Episode: 12x11 | Airdate: Oct 8, 1985
In NOVA's special sequel to1984's National Science Test, viewers can match wits with celebrity panelists David Attenborough, Michelle Johnson, Edwin Newman and Alvin Poussaint and a live studio audience. Art Fleming hosts.
Episode: 12x12 | Airdate: Oct 15, 1985
NOVA examines worldwide efforts of scientists who employ aggressive agricultural technologies to ensure food for the future.
Episode: 12x13 | Airdate: Oct 22, 1985
Albert Einstein did not live to find the answer. NOVA follows a new generation of physicists in their search to explain the mystery of the universe.
Episode: 12x14 | Airdate: Oct 29, 1985
How are the computer and the robot affecting the way we work? NOVA chronicles the new industrial revolution reshaping the American workplace.
Episode: 12x15 | Airdate: Nov 5, 1985
NOVA cameras go behind-the-scenes to reveal the new art of illusion, Hollywood-style, focusing on three blockbuster films—"Return of the Jedi," "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and "2010: The Year We Made Contact."
Episode: 12x16 | Airdate: Nov 12, 1985
NOVA charts the progress of an ambitious worldwide health program established to save the lives of millions of children who continue to die from common but curable diseases.
Episode: 12x17 | Airdate: Nov 19, 1985
NOVA follows a chase team—a group of scientists who chart deadly tornadoes—in an effort to learn more about predicting nature's most powerful and elusive weather phenomenon.
Episode: 12x18 | Airdate: Nov 26, 1985
NOVA examines current research and its ethical implications as modern medicine confronts the era of human gene therapy.
Episode: 12x19 | Airdate: Dec 3, 1985
NOVA examines the intricate world of nature's construction industry and presents rare footage of unusual habits.
Episode: 12x20 | Airdate: Dec 17, 1985
NOVA joins the 50th anniversary celebration of the DC-3—the plane that revolutionized commercial air travel, served gallantly in World War II and is called the most important plane ever built.
Season 13
Episode: 13x01 | Airdate: Jan 21, 1986
NOVA observes worldwide preparations as amateur comet hunters, astronomers and scientists armed with specialized cameras, high powered telescopes and spacecraft look to the heavens in search of the expected arrival in 1986 of Halley's Comet.
Episode: 13x02 | Airdate: Jan 28, 1986
Gaia, the Greek word for Earth goddess, also is the name of the controversial hypothesis that life on Earth controls the environment. NOVA explores this provocative theory that challenges conventional ways of thinking about the Earth.
Episode: 13x03 | Airdate: Feb 4, 1986
For centuries, the Chinese Kazakh horseman preserved their ancient traditions, refusing to be dominated by either the Chinese or nearby Russian cultures. Today, however, this nomadic tribe has integrated communism into its way of life. NOVA traces the ancient Kazahk lifestyle and looks at how the Chinese cultural Revolution has modernized Kazakh customs.
Episode: 13x04 | Airdate: Feb 11, 1986
NOVA explores the incredibly complex emotional development of infants and examines the current theory that early childhood psychological intervention can head off emotional problems later in life.
Episode: 13x05 | Airdate: Feb 18, 1986
In July 1982, a 42-year-old addict in a San Jose, California jail became paralyzed—unable to move or talk. His symptoms, caused by a bad batch of synthetic heroin, were indistinguishable from those associated with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative nerve disorder that strikes the elderly. NOVA traces the story of a "designer" drug which could lead to a major medical breakthrough.
Episode: 13x06 | Airdate: Feb 25, 1986
In July 1982, a 42-year-old addict in a San Jose, California jail became paralyzed—unable to move or talk. His symptoms, caused by a bad batch of synthetic heroin, were indistinguishable from those associated with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative nerve disorder that strikes the elderly. NOVA traces the story of a "designer" drug which could lead to a major medical breakthrough.
Episode: 13x07 | Airdate: Mar 4, 1986
NOVA journeys to a remote region of southern Venezuela where the land is alive with spectacular waterfalls, colored by exotic flowers and inhabited by rare species of birds and animals.
Episode: 13x08 | Airdate: Mar 11, 1986
NOVA follows a conservation success story as environmentalists, scientists and bird-lovers fight to save the majestic Osprey from extinction.
Episode: 13x09 | Airdate: Mar 18, 1986
When Alexander Fleming discovered the penicillin mold in 1928, he never considered its possible therapeutic value. NOVA explores the "Fleming myth" and reveals the true story of the scientists who worked behind the scenes to develop the wonder drug of the century.
Episode: 13x10 | Airdate: Mar 25, 1986
NOVA examines the medical community's alarm as the spread of antibiotic-resistant infection increases, and studies how one hospital fights its own dramatic epidemic.
Episode: 13x11 | Airdate: Apr 22, 1986
NOVA and Frontline combine resources to explore the Strategic Defense Initiative. The two-hour documentary contains the most comprehensive information on "Star Wars" ever produced. Bill Kurtis of WBBM-TV/Chicago hosts.
Episode: 13x12 | Airdate: Oct 14, 1986
NOVA joins scientists in Argentina as they help locate kidnapped children and identify thousands of dead in the aftermath of a military reign of terror.
Episode: 13x13 | Airdate: Oct 21, 1986
The adventures of the Voyager 2 spacecraft continue as it passes the rings of Uranus. Scientists suspect that violent events in the early history of the planet may have shaped Uranus and its strange collection of moons.
Episode: 13x14 | Airdate: Nov 4, 1986
Scientific breakthroughs now make it possible to reproduce ourselves in ways never before imagined. NOVA looks at the medical, legal and moral questions raised by this brave new technology.
Episode: 13x15 | Airdate: Nov 11, 1986
What are the prospects for halting or curing the deadliest epidemic ever to challenge modern medicine? NOVA finds cause for both hope and alarm in the battle against AIDS.
Episode: 13x16 | Airdate: Nov 18, 1986
Could there be life beyond Earth? Only recently has it become possible to scan the skies in a systematic attempt to find out. NOVA joins the search with guest host Lily Tomlin.
Episode: 13x17 | Airdate: Nov 25, 1986
Birds do it; bees do it, butterflies, bats and eels do it—all leave one habitat to migrate to another, often thousands of miles away. NOVA penetrates the mystery of where animals migrate, why and how they get there.
Episode: 13x18 | Airdate: Dec 2, 1986
NOVA dips into the sad plight of our coastal waters, where toxic chemicals, raw sewage and disease-carrying microbes are routinely dumped.
Episode: 13x19 | Airdate: Dec 9, 1986
Yankee ingenuity has designs on the America's Cup. NOVA goes behind-the-scenes to look at the engineering effort to design a technically advanced sailboat.
Episode: 13x20 | Airdate: Dec 16, 1986
Leprosy, a misunderstood disease that has been curable for 40 years, still afflicts some 12 million people. NOVA looks at the tragedy of the disease that need not be.
Episode: 13x21 | Airdate: Jan 13, 1987
NOVA explores the ground-breaking experiments that led to the discovery of a tiny sequence of molecules—and more clues to the mystery of how a complete baby develops from a single cell.
Season 14
Episode: 14x01 | Airdate: Jan 20, 1987
NOVA scans the universe with the infrared eye of IRAS—the Infrared Astronomical Satellite—and discovers never-before-seen comets, stars, galaxies and other celestial wonders and enigmas.
Episode: 14x02 | Airdate: Jan 27, 1987
NOVA examines a controversial theory that traces our ancestry to a small group of women living in Africa 300,000 years ago.
Episode: 14x03 | Airdate: Feb 3, 1987
Between 60 and 80 percent of all commercial airplane accidents are attributable to pilot error. NOVA looks at some shocking instances of pilot negligence and what airlines are doing to solve the problem.
Episode: 14x04 | Airdate: Feb 10, 1987
NOVA cameras travel to Borneo, one of the last habitats of the wild orangutans, where scientists study the endangered ape. Who is observing whom? It is not always clear.
Episode: 14x05 | Airdate: Feb 17, 1987
Fifty years after his death, the creator of psychoanalysis is still the subject of intense debate. Was Freud right or wrong? NOVA profiles the enigmatic man and his controversial legacy.
Episode: 14x06 | Airdate: Feb 24, 1987
NOVA travels to Antarctica with an emergency scientific expedition to study a baffling "hole" in the Earth's protective ozone layer.
Episode: 14x07 | Airdate: Mar 3, 1987
Harvard chemist George Kistiakowsky was an anti-Bolshevik soldier in 1919 Russia, an atomic bomb scientist at Los Alamos, a presidential advisor in the Eisenhower White House and an arms control activist. Shortly before Kistiakowsky death, he recounts his eventful career to interviewer Carl Sagan.
Episode: 14x08 | Airdate: Mar 10, 1987
NOVA presents two hours of the best from its 14 seasons of exciting science coverage. A "talking" chimp, an exploding volcano and a sight-and-sound space video are but a few of the memorable segments. Richard Kiley hosts.
Episode: 14x09 | Airdate: Mar 24, 1987
All over the world, farmers are taking more from the soil than they return. NOVA reports on the soil crisis in world agriculture—a plight that has already resulted in massive starvation.
Episode: 14x10 | Airdate: Mar 31, 1987
In rich and poor countries alike, once-productive farms are turning to desert because of mismanagement of water resources. NOVA examines the causes and cures of desertification.
Episode: 14x11 | Airdate: Apr 7, 1987
In a case study of the strengths and weaknesses of the United States space program, NOVA chronicles the ambitious and long-delayed Galileo mission to Jupiter—still on the ground long after its planned May 1986 launch.
Episode: 14x12 | Airdate: Oct 6, 1987
A star blows itself apart in a nearby galaxy, and astronomers scramble to study the rare event. NOVA covers a fast-breaking science story as it is happening.
Episode: 14x13 | Airdate: Oct 13, 1987
On the 25th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, NOVA investigates the spy planes and satellites that played a critical role in history and influence arms control today.
Episode: 14x14 | Airdate: Oct 20, 1987
Plants produce some of the world's most potent chemicals in the fight against disease. NOVA follows the urgent efforts to track down new medicines in nature.
Episode: 14x15 | Airdate: Oct 27, 1987
Is Detroit inventor Stanford Ovshinsky the new Thomas Edison? Japanese industries are betting that the genius behind amorphous materials-a simpler and less expensive alternative to silicon-is onto something big.
Episode: 14x16 | Airdate: Nov 3, 1987
The Panama Canal opened in 1914 after a 30-year effort that dwarfed the building of the pyramids. Historian David McCullough navigates through the canal and tells the story of the human drama behind the engineering feat.
Episode: 14x17 | Airdate: Nov 10, 1987
Millions live in the shadows of nature's ticking time-bombs—volcanoes. NOVA accompanies scientists who are developing new techniques to predict when volcanoes will erupt and how violently.
Episode: 14x18 | Airdate: Nov 17, 1987
NOVA takes a behind-the-scenes look at science and technology in the USSR, where the government is trying novel approaches in an effort to catch up with the West.
Episode: 14x19 | Airdate: Dec 1, 1987
NOVA joins underwater archaeologists as they explore the oldest shipwreck ever excavated, a richly-laden merchant vessel dating from the time of King Tut.
Episode: 14x20 | Airdate: Dec 8, 1987
A trail of evidence leading from a medieval abbey to a small town in Connecticut sheds new light on rheumatoid arthritis, a crippling inflammation of the joints with no known cause or cure.
Episode: 14x21 | Airdate: Dec 15, 1987
NOVA follows archaeologists as they unearth clues, some 7,000 years old, about an unknown, mysterious and advanced sea-faring people who lived along the North Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada.
Season 15
Episode: 15x01 | Airdate: Jan 19, 1988
Today's sophisticated fighter jets can almost fly themselves, but well-trained pilots are still needed to win air battles. NOVA looks at how planes and pilots are adapting to high technology.
Episode: 15x12 | Airdate: Jan 26, 1988
Julia Child introduces NOVA's behind-the-scenes look at how science aids in the creation of snack foods.
Episode: 15x13 | Airdate: Feb 2, 1988
Scientists investigate the frozen remains of members of the 19th century Franklin Expedition to the Canadian Arctic and ask why all perished.
Episode: 15x14 | Airdate: Feb 9, 1988
Airplane fires are often deadly. NOVA looks at efforts to make fires aboard planes less likely and more survivable.
Episode: 15x15 | Airdate: Feb 23, 1988
In part one of a two-part special presentation, NOVA reports on the trials to determine whether the new drug Interleukin-2—the first to make use of the body's own disease-fighting strategy—will live up to its promise as a pivotal cancer breakthrough. Jane Pauley of NBC News hosts and narrates.
Episode: 15x16 | Airdate: Mar 1, 1988
In part two of a two-part special presentation, NOVA reports on the trials to determine whether the new drug Interleukin-2—the first to make use of the body's own disease-fighting strategy—will live up to its promise as a pivotal cancer breakthrough. Breast cancer claims the lives of four American women every hour. Jane Pauley of NBC News hosts and narrates this NOVA report on stepped-up efforts to reduce the death rate from this all-too-common killer.
Episode: 15x17 | Airdate: Mar 8, 1988
Princeton professor and author Robert Mark tracks down the engineering secrets of some of the beautiful buildings in the world including Notre Dame in Paris, St. Paul in London and the Roman Pantheon.
Episode: 15x18 | Airdate: Mar 15, 1988
It was a blustery day in December 1986, and the New England Coast was in the midst of a winter storm, accompanied by strong on-shore gales and an unusually high tide—conditions perfect for stranding whales in the confined shallows of Cape Cod. NOVA recounts this tragic episode and the happy surprise ending for the young whales who survived after being nursed back to health by the New England Aquarium in Boston.
Episode: 15x19 | Airdate: Mar 22, 1988
Tells the story of the brilliant Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan and of his brief association at Trinity College in England with the English mathematicians G.H. Hardy and J.E. Littlewood. His full potential was never realized because of his tragic death from illness in India at age 32.
Episode: 15x20 | Airdate: Mar 29, 1988
OVA charts an electronics revolution in the making as Japan and the United States race to develop a material that will conduct electricity at room temperature with zero resistance.
Episode: 15x21 | Airdate: Apr 5, 1988
Most cases of polio in the United States are caused by the vaccine designed to prevent it. NOVA examines the controversy surrounding the nation's vaccine policy.
Season 16
Episode: 16x01 | Airdate: Sep 6, 1988
Part one of a four-part series on the pioneers of modern surgery relives the early days, when surgery was practiced without the benefit of anaesthesia or antiseptics and patients usually died.
Episode: 16x02 | Airdate: Sep 13, 1988
Once unthinkable, open-heart surgery is now an everyday miracle. NOVA looks at the brave doctors and patients who make it possible.
Episode: 16x03 | Airdate: Sep 20, 1988
From kidneys to Hearts, NOVA examines the daring attempts to replace diseased organs with transplanted ones.
Episode: 16x04 | Airdate: Sep 27, 1988
Surgeons have always been eager to help patients, even at the risk of killing them. NOVA looks at some of the excesses of surgery, and at how new drugs and technologies are rendering some operations obsolete.
Episode: 16x05 | Airdate: Oct 4, 1988
Science meets art in the controversial effort to restore Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel frescoes.
Episode: 16x06 | Airdate: Oct 11, 1988
Thirty years after Sputnik, the United States space program is mired in uncertainty, while the Russians, Europeans, Japanese and others sprint onward and upward.
Episode: 16x07 | Airdate: Oct 25, 1988
NOVA examines the troubling question of scientific fraud: How prevalent is it? Who commits it? And what happens when the perpetrators are caught?
Episode: 16x08 | Airdate: Nov 15, 1988
Using previously unavailable technology, NOVA probes the available evidence surrounding the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Episode: 16x09 | Airdate: Nov 22, 1988
Reliving a Greek myth takes an effort of mythic proportions, as NOVA reveals in its behind-the-scenes report of a human powered-flight across the Aegean Sea, a journey that symbolically recreated the mythical flight of Daedalus. NOVA follows the epic journey of the human-powered plane Daedalus 88 from the early prototypes to its dramatic landing in the surf after a 74-mile flight from the island of Crete to Santorini.
Episode: 16x10 | Airdate: Dec 6, 1988
The life of the shy, intelligent black bear in the wild—foraging, mating, playing and constantly preparing for its remarkable hibernation—is captured for the first time on film by NOVA.
Episode: 16x11 | Airdate: Dec 13, 1988
NOVA embarks on a 10-year project to profile—in its entirety—the education of a doctor. In the premiere episode, we follow a handful of students as they start their first year at Harvard Medical School under a revolutionary program emphasizing early clinical contact with patients. Part one of a ten-year study. See also "So You Want to Be a Doctor?", "Making of a Doctor", and "Doctors' Diaries".
Episode: 16x12 | Airdate: Jan 17, 1989
Was the searing summer of 1988 a taste of things to come? NOVA looks at the greenhouse effect, which portends higher temperatures, rising sea levels and other environmental disasters.
Episode: 16x13 | Airdate: Jan 24, 1989
NOVA looks at the bongo-playing scientist, adventurer, safecracker and yarn-spinner Richard Feynman, most recently famous for his role as gadfly of the Presidential Commission investigating the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.
Episode: 16x14 | Airdate: Jan 31, 1989
NOVA explains "chaos," a new science that is making surprising sense out of chaotic phenomena in nature, from the weather to brain waves.
Episode: 16x15 | Airdate: Feb 14, 1989
NOVA goes to the Soviet Union for an inside investigation of the world's most catastrophic nuclear power accident with correspondent Bill Kurtis.
Episode: 16x16 | Airdate: Feb 21, 1989
In an Idaho classroom, teacher Phil Gerrish puts an unorthodox interpretation on the day's biology lesson. As students take notes, he explains that creationism is a valid scientific explanation for the origin on life. Once relying solely on the literal word of the Bible to make their case, creationists now argue that the scientific evidence is on their side. NOVA reports on this new twist in the long-running battle between creationism and evolution.
Episode: 16x17 | Airdate: Feb 28, 1989
NOVA explores the importance of the Gulf Stream to ocean life, climate and human history.
Episode: 16x18 | Airdate: Mar 7, 1989
A team attempts to recreate the original islanders' success at moving and erecting giant moai statues. (Part 1 of 2)
Episode: 16x19 | Airdate: Mar 7, 1989
A team attempts to recreate the original islanders' success at moving and erecting giant moai statues. (Part 2 of 2)
Episode: 16x20 | Airdate: Mar 21, 1989
Scientific detectives test their ingenuity in the effort to find underground oil deposits.
Episode: 16x21 | Airdate: Mar 28, 1989
Arlo, Nancy and Janice each have a 50/50 chance of developing a devastating nerve disorder. A laboratory test can tell them if in fact they will fall victim. In their shoes, would you take the test? Thousands of others face a similar choice: to know, or not know, if they will carry the genetic time bomb of Huntington's disease. NOVA looks at this incurable disease which affects 20,000 people in the US and threatens tens of thousands of others.
Season 17
Episode: 17x01 | Airdate: Oct 3, 1989
Exposing four essential public infrastructure systems that city dwellers depend on: electricity, water, sewage and sanitation. Filmed in New York City and hosted by Judd Hirsch.
Episode: 17x02 | Airdate: Oct 10, 1989
In this profile of former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, NOVA follows events as they unfold in a unique behind-the-scenes account of a man who speaks his mind on AIDS, smoking and abortion.
Episode: 17x03 | Airdate: Oct 17, 1989
Five architects compete for the approval of architecture-obsessed Chicagoan's in the contest to build the city's new public library. NOVA looks at the strengths and weakness of each of the surprisingly varied entries.
Episode: 17x04 | Airdate: Oct 24, 1989
The atomic bomb might have ended World War II, but radar was the quiet miracle that won battles. NOVA tells the little-known wartime history of radar.
Episode: 17x05 | Airdate: Oct 31, 1989
Biologists around the world gear up to decode the three-billion-letter genetic message that describes how humans are made. Ethicists warn that it may not be such a good idea.
Episode: 17x06 | Airdate: Nov 7, 1989
NOVA studies hurricanes—the lurking giants waiting to destroy many coastal areas—by flying straight into one. Scientists hope that such close-up studies will supply the data to make better predictions.
Episode: 17x07 | Airdate: Nov 14, 1989
Increasingly awash in high water, the romantic city of Venice is counting on high-tech floodgates to save it from drowning. Environmentalists worry that the gates may destroy the fragile lagoon that surrounds the city.
Episode: 17x08 | Airdate: Nov 21, 1989
NOVA explores the science of musical sound—from what makes a classic violin to how the human brain perceives music. Bells, trumpets, human voices and computers all perform.
Episode: 17x09 | Airdate: Dec 5, 1989
The 1988 Yellowstone fire may have been one of the worst in human memory, but nature has had eons of experience with such events. NOVA accompanies scientists who are studying the surprisingly rapid recovery from the blaze. Narrated by Peter Thomas.
Episode: 17x10 | Airdate: Dec 12, 1989
NOVA re-enacts a classic case of classroom detection when English schoolboys track down a secret Soviet launch site.
Episode: 17x11 | Airdate: Jan 9, 1990
NOVA reports on the 100-year-old legacy of pollution from mining that poisons the once-pristine waters of the Rocky Mountain states. Acid Rain and economic development also contribute to stress on the West's scarce water supply.
Episode: 17x12 | Airdate: Jan 23, 1990
Using some of the largest machines ever built, American and European physicists race to discover one of the most fundamental and most elusive objects in nature—the top quark.
Episode: 17x13 | Airdate: Feb 6, 1990
NOVA takes the wraps off the art of deception in war—from simple camouflage to the expensive, radar-evading technology embodied in the Stealth bomber.
Episode: 17x14 | Airdate: Feb 13, 1990
NOVA examines an alarming nuclear waste problem at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington state, where 45 years of mismanagement in the nuclear weapons industry will cost billions to correct.
Episode: 17x15 | Airdate: Feb 27, 1990
Covering last year's Exxon Valdez oil spill from an unexplored angle, NOVA focuses on how technology failed in preventing, containing and cleaning up the Alaskan disaster.
Episode: 17x16 | Airdate: Mar 15, 1990
China in the 13th century was the richest, most powerful, most technologically advanced civilization on earth. NOVA looks at how China achieved what it did, and what in Chinese politics, culture and economy kept it from doing more.
Episode: 17x17 | Airdate: Mar 20, 1990
NOVA examines the extraordinary transformation that propelled Europe outward into the world from the 15th to 18th centuries, while China remained the insular middle kingdom.
Episode: 17x18 | Airdate: Mar 27, 1990
East and West came into direct conflict over trade and power in the 19th century. The West won. NOVA explores how Japan was later able to master Western methods, while China was not.
Episode: 17x19 | Airdate: Apr 3, 1990
NOVA covers China's long road to economic and technological equality with the West, punctuated by frequent setbacks such as the 1989 massacre of pro-democratic demonstrations in Beijing.
Season 18
Episode: 18x01 | Airdate: Oct 3, 1990
What happens when a Berkeley hippie turns detective and gets mixed up with the CIA and the KGB? NOVA follows computer sleuth Cliff Stoll as he tracks a data thief through a maze of military and research computers.
Episode: 18x02 | Airdate: Oct 9, 1990
NOVA visits Neptune, the planet that took Voyager 12 years to reach. Mysteries abound in and around this big, blue world at the outer limits of the Solar System. Narrated by Patrick Stewart.
Episode: 18x03 | Airdate: Oct 16, 1990
NOVA chronicles the Voyager space mission – from Earth to the ends of the Solar System. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and dozens of moons star in this epic voyage of exploration and a new view of the Solar System. Narrated by Patrick Stewart.
Episode: 18x04 | Airdate: Oct 23, 1990
Sixty-five years after attempts to ban them, chemical weapons pose more of a threat than ever. NOVA looks at the problem of controlling substances that are easily produced and cruelly effective.
Episode: 18x05 | Airdate: Oct 30, 1990
NOVA examines the troubled past and promising future of blimps, zeppelins, cyclocranes and other species of airships. There's life in the old gasbags yet.
Episode: 18x06 | Airdate: Nov 6, 1990
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. Narrated by Avery Brooks.
Episode: 18x07 | Airdate: Nov 13, 1990
Robotic weapons that seek out and destroy ships, planes, and other targets are the wave of the future. NOVA questions whether their proliferation may spell an end to superpower invincibility.
Episode: 18x08 | Airdate: Nov 20, 1990
Is the ivory ban in the elephant's best interest? NOVA looks at the controversial strategies to save the world's largest land animal from extinction.
Episode: 18x09 | Airdate: Nov 27, 1990
NOVA investigates the hidden world of direct marketing, pointing out how advertisers know a lot more about people than they think.
Episode: 18x10 | Airdate: Dec 4, 1990
NOVA profiles the llama, alpaca, vicuna and guanaco of South America. At one time nearly extinct, these four members of the camel family are exceptionally well adapted to life in the beautiful high Andes.
Episode: 18x11 | Airdate: Dec 18, 1990
NOVA tracks a mysterious disease that suddenly and fatally attacks the children of a small Brazilian town. Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta are called in to crack the case.
Episode: 18x12 | Airdate: Jan 8, 1991
NOVA returns to Mount St. Helens a decade after its cataclysmic eruption to learn how nature is recovering from the disaster.
Episode: 18x13 | Airdate: Apr 30, 1991
An experiment that could mean limitless supplies of energy sets the scientific world on its head. NOVA covers the cold fusion controversy.
Episode: 18x14 | Airdate: Feb 5, 1991
NOVA covers the most elaborate expedition ever undertaken in the search for dinosaurs—to China's Gobi desert. Paleontologists brave sandstorms, heat and worse to find their fossils.
Episode: 18x15 | Airdate: Feb 12, 1991
NOVA looks at the question of whether present-day birds are dinosaurs. The origin of birds, avian dinosaurs, is explored.
Episode: 18x16 | Airdate: Feb 19, 1991
Tyrannosaurus rex, a kind of dinosaur, recently turned up in a nearly complete skeleton in Montana. NOVA follows the dig to extract the bones and looks at the science and lore of dinosaurs in general.
Episode: 18x17 | Airdate: Feb 26, 1991
In the first program of a three-part series on the Soviet space program, NOVA profiles the mysterious genius behind the world's first satellite, the first man to orbit the Earth and other early Russian triumphs in space.
Episode: 18x18 | Airdate: Feb 27, 1991
NOVA reveals the details of Moscow's secret plan to reach the Moon ahead of the Americans.
Episode: 18x19 | Airdate: Feb 28, 1991
In an unprecedented insider's look, NOVA covers the training, flight and recovery of a cosmonaut crew that visits the Soviet space station Mir. Unexpected emergencies show that space travel is still far from routine.
Episode: 18x20 | Airdate: Mar 5, 1991
Gregory Peck narrates a scientific voyage around Vancouver Island in search of whales. Humpbacks, Killers, Grays and other whale species make their appearance in spectacular, never-before-seen footage both above and below the waves.
Episode: 18x21 | Airdate: Mar 26, 1991
The computer chess champ matches wits with the human world titleholder.
Season 19
Episode: 19x01 | Airdate: Oct 1, 1991
NOVA covers the causes and attempted cures of baldness. Some men take pride in their bald heads; others will go to great lengths to cover up. Alan Rachins of NBC's LA Law tells the story.
Episode: 19x02 | Airdate: Oct 9, 1991
In a two-hour special, NOVA follows seven aspiring doctors through four years of medical school. The first examination, the anatomy lab, the first death, the first baby-it's all part of becoming a doctor. Neil Patrick Harris, star of ABC's Doogie Howser, MD hosts.
Episode: 19x03 | Airdate: Oct 15, 1991
Forty years after they were discovered, the Dead Sea Scrolls have yet to be published in their entirety. NOVA looks at the laborious-some say scandalous-process of compiling and releasing this religious treasure.
Episode: 19x04 | Airdate: Oct 22, 1991
NOVA accompanies Soviet scientists on a deadly mission inside the sarcophagus-the massive structure that entombs the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Will there be another deadly explosion?
Episode: 19x05 | Airdate: Nov 5, 1991
The tallest mountain in the world? Think again: cartographers had to when satellite date revealed a peak called "K2" might be the real champ. Which is the world's tallest mountain?
Episode: 19x06 | Airdate: Nov 12, 1991
The fastest machines in the sky are going to be slow stuff when the latest speed demons on the drawing board take to the air. NOVA looks at the intoxicating lure to fly even faster.
Episode: 19x07 | Airdate: Dec 3, 1991
NOVA follows the efforts of four participants in a celebrated California study to unblock arteries without using drugs or surgery before their heart disease becomes fatal. A studio segment featuring experts with varying medical views will air as part of the 60-minute program. ABC News Medical Correspondent George Strait moderates.
Episode: 19x08 | Airdate: Dec 10, 1991 (80 min)
his 80-minute NOVA pledge special chronicles the building of the Worldwide Plaza, 47-story office tower in midtown Manhattan, from a hole in the ground to a 770-foot skyscraper.
Episode: 19x09 | Airdate: Dec 17, 1991
Science comes to the aid of art. Museums now employ scientists to find forgeries and give insight into the process of artist creation. Richard Dreyfuss narrates.
Episode: 19x10 | Airdate: Jan 14, 1992
NOVA covers the fight to put out Saddam Hussein's bonfire of oil wells in Kuwait, which has created the worst man-made pollution event in history. Fire fighting teams from Houston and elsewhere are faced with a Texas-size job.
Episode: 19x11 | Airdate: Jan 21, 1992
NOVA takes a voyage on the newest of America's doomsday machines—the ballistic missile submarine USS Michigan. The Cold War may be won, but these submerged super arsenals continue to prowl the deep.
Episode: 19x12 | Airdate: Jan 28, 1992
Few people give any thought to wildlife in the midst of a war. During the Gulf War, environmentalist John Walsh did his best to save animals from oil spills, bullets and other dangers.
Episode: 19x13 | Airdate: Feb 11, 1992
The nose knows. How much is the subject of NOVA's investigation of the mysterious aromas and hidden messages picked up by our sense of smell. David Suzuki hosts.
Episode: 19x14 | Airdate: Feb 18, 1992
Rating the audience for TV shows is a classic problem in statistical analysis. NOVA finds that ratings are getting more accurate but still are far from scientific.
Episode: 19x15 | Airdate: Mar 3, 1992
Criminals still make money the old-fashioned way—by counterfeiting. NOVA looks at why US currency is so easy to fake and what the government is doing about it.
Episode: 19x16 | Airdate: Mar 10, 1992
NOVA examines the mysterious whale strandings along the beaches of Cape Cod Bay, as the puzzling behavior becomes more common.
Episode: 19x17 | Airdate: Mar 17, 1992
NOVA goes behind the scenes to watch the filming of a big-screen IMAX/Omnimax space spectacle. Astronauts operate the cameras on location aboard the Space Shuttle.
Episode: 19x18 | Airdate: Mar 24, 1992
The spectacular eclipse of 1991 passed over major observatories on the island of Hawaii. NOVA was there for 61⁄2 minutes of frenetic research that revealed new secrets about the Sun.
Season 20
Episode: 20x01 | Airdate: Aug 25, 1992
NOVA looks at grace, speed, strength and endurance of humans and animals.
Episode: 20x02 | Airdate: Sep 29, 1992
Physicists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard reenact the signing of the 1939 letter that alerted President Franklin Roosevelt to the feasibility of atomic weapons. Szilard drafted and Einstein signed the famous warning, which led to the building of the first atomic bomb.
Episode: 20x03 | Airdate: Oct 13, 1992
NOVA goes behind the scenes to give the real story behind the FBI unit popularized in the Academy Award-winning film, The Silence of the Lambs. Using a detailed psychological profile, the unit helped the Rochester, New York police department catch a notorious serial killer who targeted prostitutes. Actor Patrick Stewart narrates.
Episode: 20x04 | Airdate: Oct 20, 1992
NOVA follows the trail of America's first inhabitants. Did they migrate across a Bering Sea land bridge at the end of the last ice age, as we all learned in school? Or did they arrive thousands of years earlier, possibly by some different route, as new archaeological evidence increasingly hints?
Episode: 20x05 | Airdate: Oct 27, 1992
NOVA explores Earth's greatest natural wonder by rafting down the river that created it, repeating the spectacular first canyon voyage of the 19th-century explorer John Wesley Powell. The Grand Canyon tells the story of nearly 2 billion years of Earth history plus the changes caused by three decades of human intervention.
Episode: 20x06 | Airdate: Nov 4, 1992 (90 min)
In a 90-minute special presentation, NOVA reveals the ancient secrets of how the pyramids were built by actually building one. A noted Egyptologist, Mark Lehner, and a professional stonemason, Roger Hopkins (This Old House), join forces in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Giza to put clever and sometimes bizarre pyramid construction theories to the test.
Episode: 20x07 | Airdate: Nov 10, 1992
Five thousand years ago, a man perished in a mountain storm. In 1991, his frozen body was found along with artifacts of his vanished way of life. NOVA covers the international effort to unlock the secrets of this astonishing discovery.
Episode: 20x08 | Airdate: Nov 17, 1992
NOVA delves into the deep sea drama of life among the dolphins at research stations in Florida and Australia. Like humans and chimpanzees, dolphins have evolved a sophisticated social system that provides clues about the origins and purpose of big brains and intelligence.
Episode: 20x09 | Airdate: Dec 1, 1992
Two paralyzed drug addicts travel to Sweden to receive a revolutionary treatment for brain disease that is largely unavailable in the US due to the ban on fetal tissue research. "Brain Transplant" continues the remarkable story of a mysterious malady linked to a bad batch of synthetic heroin that NOVA first covered in the 1986 award-winning film, The Case of the Frozen Addict.
Episode: 20x10 | Airdate: Dec 22, 1992
NOVA looks at how Russia and the United States are attacking the intractable problem of alcohol abuse with old and new weapons—including prohibition, hypnotism, imprisonment, surveillance, deception, aversion therapy and group therapy as practiced by Alcoholics Anonymous.
Episode: 20x11 | Airdate: Dec 29, 1992
NOVA examines the high-tech efforts to preserve the world's animal diversity. Noah needed only an ark—but today's conservationists need all the tools that biology, ecology, diplomacy and politics can muster if endangered species are to survive beyond the next century.
Episode: 20x12 | Airdate: Jan 5, 1993
NOVA follows the international team of advisors who are fulfilling the UN mandate to dismantle Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear technology, poison chemicals, missiles and giant guns are some of the threats that inspectors must hunt down in a cat-and-mouse game with the Iraqis.
Episode: 20x13 | Airdate: Jan 19, 1993
The Gulf War was fought in 38 days of non-stop bombing and four days of swift ground action. Did bombing win it? NOVA looks at the history of strategic bombing and asks whether bombing has now achieved preeminence in warfare.
Episode: 20x14 | Airdate: Jan 26, 1993
For four decades, 400 African American men from Macon, Alabama were unwitting participants in a government study of untreated syphilis. NOVA tells the story of this notorious human experiment. George Strait, ABC News Medical Correspondent, hosts.
Episode: 20x15 | Airdate: Feb 2, 1993
NOVA tells the story of the German scientists abducted to the Soviet Union after World War II to help build an atomic bomb. The success of the crash program in 1949, with the explosion of the first Soviet nuclear weapon, shocked the world.
Episode: 20x16 | Airdate: Feb 9, 1993
NOVA covers scientists on the brink of a sputtering, shaking, impatient volcano, trying to forecast when it will go off. When it does, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines goes big time, producing the largest volcanic eruption in 80 years.
Episode: 20x17 | Airdate: Feb 16, 1993
Athletes are training smarter, running faster, jumping higher and generally outperforming their predecessors—thanks to high technology. NOVA covers the record-setting trend for improving sports performance with science.
Episode: 20x18 | Airdate: Feb 23, 1993
These days, piracy on the high seas often involves sonar, magnometers, metal detectors and other high-tech equipment for finding and plundering sunken ships. NOVA explores the swashbuckling seafaring pirates of old and their present-day successors.
Episode: 20x19 | Airdate: Mar 2, 1993
Wherever we shed our body cells, we leave an indisputable identity card: our DNA. NOVA investigates the new science of DNA typing which is putting increasing numbers of murderers and rapists behind bars.
Episode: 20x20 | Airdate: Mar 30, 1993
NOVA covers both sides of the stormy controversy over the Tasaday tribe. When these isolated cave dwellers were discovered in the Philippines in 1971, they were hailed as a Stone Age relic. Now, many anthropologists denounce them as fakes.
Season 21
Episode: 21x01 | Airdate: Oct 5, 1993
NOVA fans from around the country match wits in a fast-paced contest of general science knowledge celebrating NOVA's 20th anniversary. Famous guests pose questions for the viewers at home. Marc Summers hosts.
Episode: 21x02 | Airdate: Oct 12, 1993
Forensic sleuth Clyde Snow and a posse of experts travel to Bolivia in search of the remains of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They find Hollywood and legend got a few things wrong.
Episode: 21x03 | Airdate: Oct 19, 1993
Magician James "The Amazing" Randi tests the claims of mind readers, fortune tellers, faith healers and others with purported paranormal powers. As a magician, "I know how people are deceived," Randi says.
Episode: 21x04 | Airdate: Oct 26, 1993
NOVA covers the tense vigil of three people with terminal lung disease as they await the most complex of all organ transplants – a new lung. Months of waiting end in a few frenzied hours of intricate surgery.
Episode: 21x05 | Airdate: Nov 2, 1993
NOVA soars with the condor, an extraordinary bird that lives a tenuous existence in the California mountains and the Andes of South America. Footage includes never-before-photographed nesting sites in the cliffs of the Patagonia.
Episode: 21x06 | Airdate: Nov 9, 1993
With help from director Steven Spielberg, author Michael Crichton and a host of scientific experts, NOVA investigates what it would take to recreate the dinosaur theme park in Jurassic Park. It won't be as easy as it was for Hollywood.
Episode: 21x07 | Airdate: Nov 16, 1993
NOVA takes viewers on the ride of their lives as it explores the science of roller coasters, where physics and psychology meet. New rides of the future may take place entirely in the mind—with virtual reality.
Episode: 21x08 | Airdate: Nov 30, 1993
US federal investigators are called in to determine the cause of a mysterious jetliner crash in Panama, Copa Airlines Flight 201. Nothing about the accident makes sense, until a key clue emerges.
Episode: 21x09 | Airdate: Dec 7, 1993 (90 min)
Bill Cosby guides viewers through the most exciting footage from two decades of NOVA in a 20th anniversary salute. Real-life action, adventure, mystery, drama and non-stop discovery fill this 90-minute special.
Episode: 21x10 | Airdate: Dec 21, 1993
A profile of the late Richard Feynman – an atomic bomb pioneer, Nobel prize-winning physicist, acclaimed teacher and all-around eccentric, who helped solve the mystery of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.
Episode: 21x11 | Airdate: Dec 28, 1993
NOVA explores the nature of human perception through the puzzling condition called visual agnosia, the inability to recognize faces and familiar objects, made famous in Oliver Sacks' book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat.
Episode: 21x12 | Airdate: Jan 18, 1994
NOVA delves into the history of secret communications and the people who wrack their brains to decipher them. The program probes the most celebrated of all cryptographic coups: the breaking of the World War II codes used by Japan and Germany and how code breaking helped shorten the war.
Episode: 21x13 | Airdate: Jan 25, 1994
Velociraptors and primitive birds are among the fabulous fossil finds as NOVA accompanies an American Museum of Natural History expedition to the Gobi Desert. The trip relives the exploits of the Museum's dashing explorer of the 1920s, Roy Chapman Andrews -said to be the real-life model for Indiana Jones.
Episode: 21x14 | Airdate: Feb 1, 1994
NOVA follows members of the US Aerobatic Team as they prepare for and compete in the 1992 World Aerobatic Championship. The sport, as precisely choreographed as gymnastics-except that it takes place in airplanes at 200 miles per hour-has always been on the leading edge of developments in aviation.
Episode: 21x15 | Airdate: Feb 8, 1994
NOVA explores ice-capped mountains-on the equator. These African giants are magical islands of life towering above the scorched plains. Giant forest hogs, bearded vultures, the elusive bongo and other exotic creatures live in this harsh and isolated high country.
Episode: 21x16 | Airdate: Feb 15, 1994
NOVA covers exciting and controversial research with chimpanzees who have been trained to express themselves with human symbols. Are they speaking their minds? Or are they just aping their trainers?
Episode: 21x17 | Airdate: Feb 28, 1994
In the first part of a three-part series, noted anthropologist Donald Johanson probes the earliest ancestors of the human species, reaching back more than three million years to a strange ape who walked upright. Johanson takes viewers to the site in Ethiopia where he discovered the fossil remains of this missing link nicknamed "Lucy".
Episode: 21x18 | Airdate: Mar 1, 1994
Anthropologist Donald Johanson looks at how our human ancestors of two million years ago made their living. Contrary to popular myth, scavenging was a more lucrative living than hunting – and may have contributed to the development of human intelligence.
Episode: 21x19 | Airdate: Mar 2, 1994
At what point did our distant ancestors become anatomically like us? And, more importantly, when did they begin to act like us? Anthropologist Donald Johanson looks at what it is that makes us human.
Episode: 21x20 | Airdate: Apr 12, 1994
NOVA visits the most cigarette-addicted nation in the world, China. Western advertising and trading practices have exacerbated the fatal romance with smoking in the world's most populous country, where lung cancer cases are beginning to strain the nation's health care system.
Episode: 21x21 | Airdate: Apr 19, 1994
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 action includes Top Gun mock combat exercises and live-ammunition patrols over Iraq.
Season 22
Episode: 22x01 | Airdate: Oct 11, 1994
Polly wants a crackdown when it comes to the illegal trade in the world's most beautiful and intelligent birds: parrots. NOVA goes undercover with a US government sting that breaks an international parrot smuggling ring, landing some surprising suspects.
Episode: 22x02 | Airdate: Oct 18, 1994
NOVA profiles "Genie", a girl whose parents kept her imprisoned in near total isolation from infancy. When social workers discovered her as a teenager, Genie had not learned to walk or talk. This NOVA documentary includes never-before-seen footage of Genie during her rehabilitation and probes how and when we learn the skills that make us "human."
Episode: 22x03 | Airdate: Oct 25, 1994
NOVA explores the legacy of the great Auk, a magnificent flightless bird that was hunted to extinction over a century ago. In a journey retracing its migratory route, host Richard Wheeler kayaks from Newfoundland to Cape Cod and discovers that other marine species face the Auk's luckless fate.
Episode: 22x04 | Airdate: Nov 1, 1994
NOVA tackles the long-taboo subject of menopause, profiling new research and examining the medical and ethical controversies that arise when science enables women to postpone menopause or even to bear children long after "the change." Stockard Channing narrates.
Episode: 22x05 | Airdate: Nov 8, 1994
NOVA travels deep into the Amazon wilderness in search of a mysterious tribe- a tribe that dismembered and partially ate three prospectors in 1976. Locating the group, NOVA lives with them for three months, gaining insight into the customs and beliefs of a people whose lifestyle has not changed for centuries.
Episode: 22x06 | Airdate: Nov 15, 1994
NOVA probes the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake. Even as the city struggles to repair itself from the tragedy, seismic pressure continues to build. Scientists fear that newly discovered faults could, at any moment, trigger California's most devastating natural disaster.
Episode: 22x07 | Airdate: Nov 29, 1994
Ten million years ago, an enormous volcanic eruption buried much of what is now Nebraska in up to 10 feet of ash, preserving countless skeletons of prehistoric big game animals. NOVA joins the discoverer of this treasure trove to learn what life was like when a lot more than buffalo roamed the West.
Episode: 22x08 | Airdate: Dec 6, 1994
Hobbled by defective eyesight because of its original, bungled prescription, the Hubble Space Telescope was recently repaired in a dramatic Space Shuttle mission. NOVA follows the exploits of astronauts who saved the day, and the stunning work that Hubble has performed in the months since its repair.
Episode: 22x09 | Airdate: Dec 20, 1994
NOVA travels to Lake Baikal, the world's oldest and deepest lake, containing one-fifth of all the fresh water on Earth. Investigating Baikal from above, below and all around, NOVA charts its dramatically changing environment over the course of four seasons.
Episode: 22x10 | Airdate: Dec 27, 1994
NOVA explores the common threads that link the more than 5,000 languages of Earth, including a controversial theory that claims to reconstruct words from a time when only a handful of languages were spoken, recalling the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.
Episode: 22x11 | Airdate: Jan 9, 1995
The subjects of Stone Age Cave paintings thunder onto the screen as NOVA explores Woolly mammoths. Recent discoveries show that the hairy ancestors of Elephants fought off extinction much longer than anyone thought, surviving on an isolated island in the Arctic Ocean until as recently as 4,000 years ago.
Episode: 22x12 | Airdate: Jan 24, 1995
NOVA investigates the myth and reality of the first known Europeans to reach North America – Vikings. These intrepid Norsemen explored and settled parts of present-day North America 500 years before Columbus set sail.
Episode: 22x13 | Airdate: Jan 31, 1995
Entomologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward O. Wilson shows who's boss on this planet: ants. The professor's infectious fascination for ant civilization wins over even the most confirmed "formicophobe" (ant hater).
Episode: 22x14 | Airdate: Feb 7, 1995
NOVA uses recently discovered documents to uncover the complicity of German architects and engineers in the Holocaust. Focusing on Auschwitz, the program tells a tale of ever-deepening evil as the prison camp was methodically converted into a super-efficient factory for genocide.
Episode: 22x15 | Airdate: Feb 14, 1995
Born joined at the pelvis, Siamese twins Dao and Duan were brought to the United States from Thailand to assess their chances for being separated surgically. NOVA covers the intricate planning and protracted operations that eventually made the two girls into two distinct individuals.
Episode: 22x16 | Airdate: Feb 19, 1995
A series of five programs inspired by Diane Ackerman's book A Natural History of the Senses, each examining one of the senses. (Part 1 of 5)
Episode: 22x17 | Airdate: Feb 20, 1995
A series of five programs inspired by Diane Ackerman's book A Natural History of the Senses, each examining one of the senses. (Part 2 of 5)
Episode: 22x18 | Airdate: Feb 21, 1995
A series of five programs inspired by Diane Ackerman's book A Natural History of the Senses, each examining one of the senses. (Part 3 of 5)
Episode: 22x19 | Airdate: Feb 22, 1995
A series of five programs inspired by Diane Ackerman's book A Natural History of the Senses, each examining one of the senses. (Part 4 of 5)
Episode: 22x20 | Airdate: Feb 22, 1995
A series of five programs inspired by Diane Ackerman's book A Natural History of the Senses, each examining one of the senses. (Part 5 of 5)
Episode: 22x21 | Airdate: Mar 7, 1995
Using microphotography to explore the hidden world inside the human body, this program covers three incredible team efforts: the coordination of muscles, bones, heart and circulatory system that makes Mike Powell the world's greatest long jumper; the digestive dynamo that turns a simple sandwich eaten by five-time Olympic gold medalist Bonnie Blair into raw energy for a blistering sprint down the ice; and the ultimate event--the development of a new human life inside track star Karen Hatchett.
Episode: 22x22 | Airdate: May 3, 1995
In the third installment of a 10-year project, NOVA checks up on a group of aspiring doctors who've been chronicled since their first day of medical school in 1987. Now bona fide MDs and in the middle of residency training, the group faces the awesome responsibility of curing the sick and keeping their own lives intact.
Episode: 22x23 | Airdate: May 23, 1995
What does it take to win at Indy? NOVA follows champion race driver Bobby Rahal and a team of engineers as they strive to design a new car that can win the checkered flag at the Memorial Day classic. The program also features racing insights from top drivers Emerson Fittipaldi, Willy T. Ribbs and Lyn Saint James.
Season 23
Episode: 23x01 | Airdate: Oct 10, 1995
Episode: 23x02 | Airdate: Oct 17, 1995
Episode: 23x03 | Airdate: Oct 24, 1995
From their blistering beginnings as molten rock, the Hawiian islands have grown into a verdant paradise of unique lifeforms.
Episode: 23x04 | Airdate: Oct 31, 1995
Episode: 23x05 | Airdate: Nov 7, 1995
Episode: 23x06 | Airdate: Nov 14, 1995
Episode: 23x07 | Airdate: Nov 28, 1995
Episode: 23x08 | Airdate: Dec 19, 1995
Episode: 23x09 | Airdate: Dec 26, 1995
Episode: 23x10 | Airdate: Jan 9, 1996
Episode: 23x11 | Airdate: Jan 16, 1996
Episode: 23x12 | Airdate: Jan 30, 1996
Episode: 23x13 | Airdate: Feb 6, 1996
Episode: 23x14 | Airdate: Feb 20, 1996
Episode: 23x15 | Airdate: Feb 27, 1996
Carl Sagan and other scientists investigate claims that people have been visited or abducted by aliens.
Episode: 23x16 | Airdate: Mar 26, 1996
The Great Flood of 1993 leaves a wake of destruction across the Midwest. Can rivers ever be contained?
Episode: 23x17 | Airdate: Apr 2, 1996
Episode: 23x18 | Airdate: Apr 9, 1996
Explore the unique culture of the Yanomami, an isolated tribe living deep in the Amazonian rainforest.
Episode: 23x19 | Airdate: Apr 16, 1996
Forensic scientists search for clues hidden within the chaos of crime scenes to help law enforcement find the Unabomber.
Specials
Episode: S47 Special | Airdate: Apr 15, 2020 (120 min)
Diabetes and pre-diabetes affect over 100 million people in the U.S., costing more than $325 billion each year. It's now predicted that one in three children born since 2000 will develop the disease. "Blood Sugar Rising" puts human faces to these statistics, exploring the history and science of the illness through portraits and voices of Americans whose stories shape the film. Together, they present a dramatic depiction of this hidden national crisis. The two-hour special also reveals new hopes—from the rise of safer and easier medical treatments to new discoveries about lifestyle and environmental factors, the documentary follows those taking action to improve diabetes management and prevention.
The episode list was truncated because of the large number of episodes. Visit the seasons page to see individual seasons' episode guides.