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Silicon Valley

Aired February 5, 2013

Decades before Steve Jobs dreamed up Apple or Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, the invention of the microchip launched the world into the Information Age.

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Henry Ford

Aired January 29, 2013

The story of a farm boy who rose from obscurity to become the most influential American innovator of the 20th century.

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Grand Coulee Dam

Aired April 18, 2017 | 82 min

At once the story of an astonishing engineering achievement, and a cautionary tale about arrogance, our relationship to the natural world, and the price of progress.

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Triangle Fire

Aired January 30, 2018 | 60 min

It was the deadliest workplace accident in New York City’s history.

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In 1881, 25 men led by Adolphus Greely set sail from Newfoundland to Lady Franklin Bay in the high Arctic, where they planned to collect a wealth of scientific data from a vast area of the world’s surface that had been described as a "sheer blank." Three years later, only six survivors returned, with a daunting story of shipwreck, starvation, mutiny and cannibalism.

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Panama Canal

Aired January 24, 2011 | 83 min

In 1914, the Panama Canal connected the world’s two largest oceans. American ingenuity and innovation had succeeded where the French had failed disastrously, but the U.S. paid a price for victory.

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Dinosaur Wars

Aired January 17, 2011 | 53 min

In the late 19th century, paleontologists Edward Cope and O.C. Marsh uncovered the remains of hundreds of prehistoric animals in the American West, including dozens of previously undiscovered dinosaur species. But the rivalry that developed between them would spiral out of control, permanently damaging their careers and threatening the future of American paleontology.

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Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World

Aired May 10, 2010 | 112 min

The 300-year saga of the American whaling industry, from its origins off the coast of New England, through the age of deep ocean whaling, and on to its demise in the decades following the Civil War.

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Earth Days

Aired April 19, 2010 | 113 min

A meditation on man’s complex relationship with nature and an engaging history of the revolutionary achievements and missed opportunities of eco-activism.

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The Polio Crusade

Aired December 7, 2022 | 53 min

The story of the polio crusade pays tribute to a time when Americans banded together to conquer a terrible disease. The medical breakthrough saved countless lives and had a pervasive impact on American philanthropy that continues to be felt today.

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Grand Central

Aired February 4, 2008

A marvel of engineering, architecture, and vision, the story of the Beaux Arts structure on 42nd Street that forever changed midtown Manhattan.

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The Lobotomist

Aired January 21, 2008

In the 1940s Dr. Walter Freeman gained fame for perfecting the lobotomy, then hailed as a miracle cure for the severely mentally ill. But within a few years, lobotomy was labeled one of the most barbaric mistakes of modern medicine.

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