Public Broadcasting Service (U.S.).

Relive Orson Welles' infamous radio dramatization 75 years after the mass hysteria event it spawned. The film examines the elements that made America ripe for the hoax: America's longtime fascination with life on Mars; the emergence of radio as a powerful new medium; the shocking Hindenburg explosion of 1937; and Welles himself, the 23-year-old wunderkind director of the drama and mischief-maker supreme.

Retrace Einstein's thought experiments as NOVA reveals the simple but powerful ideas that reshaped our understanding of gravity, illuminating the theory of general relativity -and Einstein's brilliance- as never before.

This film follows Albert Einstein from his childhood dreams of traveling at the speed of light, to the establishment of his Nobel Prize winning, special theory of relativity. Along the way, concepts in theoretical physics are animated allowing viewers access inside the mind of a genius.

By the time he died in 1931, Thomas Alva Edison was one of the most famous men in the world. The holder of more patents than any other inventor in history, Edison had achieved glory as the genius behind such revolutionary inventions as sound recording, motion pictures, and electric light. Edison explores the complex alchemy that accounts for the celebrity of America's most famous inventor, offering new perspectives on the man and his milieu, and illuminating...

As early humans spread out across the world, their toughest challenge was colonizing the Americas - because a huge ice sheet blocked the route. It has long been thought that the pioneers, known as Clovis people, arrived about 13,000 years ago, but an underwater discovery in Mexico suggests people arrived earlier than previously thought - and by boat, not on foot. How closely related were these First Americans to today's Native Americans? It's a controversial...

This program sheds light on the fascinating story of a president who knew how to harness the nation's grief over JFK's assassination, and become an unlikely champion of civil rights. The film includes rarely seen footage, secret White House tapes, and personal testimony from LBJ's advisors, biographers, friends, and family.

This film presents the discovery of the speed of light through the connection of various scientific experiments which preceded it. Using the work of Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Galileo Galilei, James Clerk Maxwell made this discovery unintentionally after measuring the speed of electromagnetic waves. Throughout the film, animations of concepts in theoretical physics give viewers access into the minds of geniuses. Distributed by PBS Distribution...

Scientists have struggled for centuries to pinpoint the qualities that distinguish humans from the millions of other animal species with which we share the vast majority of our DNA. In this NOVA scienceNOW program, we explore those traits once thought to be uniquely human to discover their evolutionary roots.

Frail and failing but determined to see the war through to victory, FDR wins re-election and begins planning for a peaceful postwar world, but a cerebral hemorrhage kills him at 63. After her husband's death, Eleanor Roosevelt proves herself a shrewd politician and a skilled negotiator in her own right, as well as a champion of civil rights, civil liberties and the United Nations. When she dies in 1962, she is mourned everywhere as the First Lady...

These 10 Buildings represent architects who dared to strike out on their own and design radical new types of buildings that permanently altered our environmental and cultural landscape. A state capitol that Thomas Jefferson designed to resemble a Roman temple, the home of Henry Ford's first assembly line, the first indoor regional shopping mall, an airport with a swooping concrete roof that seems to float on air - these are among the buildings surveyed...