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Wanted—Butch and Sundance

Viewing Ideas

Before Watching

1. Assign different students to "expert" groups. Each group should be given one of the following question sets as a focus for watching the program.

   1. What theories have been proposed for what happened to Butch and Sundance? How do Snow and his colleagues test these theories? What evidence do they find to support or contradict them?

   2. How objective do the researchers seem in their search? What observations can you make from the program to show that their enthusiasm did or did not affect their ability to evaluate the evidence they collect?

After Watching

1. After watching, ask the expert groups to discuss their findings and present them to the class.

2. Some of the evidence Snow gathers in building his case is historical (such as a letter), while other evidence relies on state-of-the-art technology (such as computer projections of how a face might have looked, based on skeletal remains). Ask students to compare the reliability of each type of evidence. What factors did they consider in making their comparisons?