Seasons & episodes

S0 · E1To The Moon 1999-07-13 · 117 min＋

The mission seemed impossible, the odds astronomical, but the results were spectacular. NOVA presents the fascinating story behind the Apollo space program, including the historic walk on the moon in 1969, in a two-hour special. Meet unsung heroes, experience the dangers, and discover new Apollo perspectives through rare footage, little-known facts, and interviews with NASA scientists, engineers, geologists, and the astronauts themselves.

On August 21, a total solar eclipse crosses the continental U.S. for the first time in 99 years. Scientists and cutting-edge NASA missions investigate this once-in-a-life-time event: how and why they occur, and they reveal about the sun.

Follow the diabetes epidemic in the U.S. Diabetes and pre-diabetes affect over 100 million people in the country, costing more than $325 billion each year. The documentary puts human faces to these statistics, exploring the history and science of the illness through portraits of Americans whose stories shape the film.

S0 · E4Gene-Editing Reality Check 2020-09-04 · 20 min＋

CRISPR gene-editing technology is advancing quickly. What can it do now and in the future?

Why does a widely used internet search engine deliver results that can be blatantly racist and sexist? Two leading information researchers investigate their discoveries of hidden biases in the search technology we rely on every day.

S0 · E6Predicting My MS 2022-02-23 · 30 min＋

A filmmaker with a rare type of multiple sclerosis explores the mysterious causes of MS.

S0 · E7Sea Change: Bounty in the Gulf of Maine 2024-07-24 · 54 min＋

Discover the Gulf of Maine and how its bounty was forever changed by a global appetite for fish. Now with the Gulf warming faster than 97 percent of the world’s oceans, witness how wildlife and people are adapting to rapid change.

S0 · E8Sea Change: Peril in the Gulf of Maine 2024-07-31 · 54 min＋

Dive into Cashes Ledge with scientists as they race to discover if this remote and relatively pristine part of the Gulf of Maine is vulnerable to rapid warming. Can Cashes still offer hope for the Gulf’s more than 3,000 species?

S0 · E9Sea Change: Survival in the Gulf of Maine 2024-08-07 · 54 min＋

Now at a crossroads for the future of the Gulf of Maine and our oceans, Indigenous peoples and scholars practice climate resilience and adaptation, scientists track developments, and entrepreneurs find new ways to make a living from the sea.

S0 · E10When Machines Prescribe 2025-04-30 · 18 min＋

Investigate medical algorithms in which the patient’s race drives decisions.

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S1 · E1The Making Of A Natural History Film 1974-03-03 · 55 min＋

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.