The Greely Expedition: Chapter 1
A daunting story of shipwreck, starvation, mutiny and cannibalism amongst a group left abandoned in the high arctic.
George Bond: Diving Pioneer
George Bond studied the bodily effects of deep sea diving and shepherded the development of saturation diving. A doctor and a navy officer, he spearheaded Sealab I, II and III.
Scott Carpenter: Astronaut to Aquanaut
An American astronaut and an aquanaut, Scott Carpenter was part of Project Mercury and operated the Aurora 7 spacecraft, which orbited the earth three times. He also joined U.S. Navy’s SEALAB project and stayed underwater for a record of 30 days.
Trailer: Extended | Chasing the Moon
In 1969, humanity paused and looked skyward to witness the impossible. Fifty years later, pause once again. CHASING THE MOON premieres across three nights, beginning July 8 on PBS.
Surviving the Dust Bowl: Chapter 1
Surviving the Dust Bowl is the remarkable story of the determined people who clung to their homes and way of life, enduring drought, dust, disease — even death — for nearly a decade.
The Price of Feathers
Plume, an arrangement of feather as ornament, especially the prized plume from wading birds in the Everglades surpassed the price of gold. The mass killing of these birds soon led to anti-plume campaign by the Florida Audubon Society, with support from the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs and resulted in grassroots conservation movement.
The Swamp: Trailer
The history of the Everglades is a dramatic yet little known story of humanity’s attempt to conquer nature.
The Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928
In the summer of 1928, heavy rainfall raised Lake Okeechobee’s water level three feet above normal. That fall, a hurricane smashed the coast of Florida, and the impact flooded Lake Okeechobee. The inland flood obliterated 21 miles of the 47-mile earthen and an estimated 2,500 people died in Southern Florida, most of them migrant farm workers.
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas advocated for conservation and joined the movement to make the Everglades a national park. In 1947, she published The Everglades: River of Grass and forever redefined the region as essential not only to wildlife, but to people.
Surviving the Dust Bowl: Trailer
The remarkable story of the determined people who clung to their homes and way of life, enduring drought, dust, disease — even death — for nearly a decade.
Hamilton Disston: Pioneering Everglades Developer
In 1881, Hamilton Disston, a wealthy enterpreneur cut a deal to purchase four million acres of Everglades, hoping to drain the land for selling and promised to drain an additional 12 million acres. But the wet season reclaimed the lands and six years later, the state commission declared his efforts a failure.
Letter from a father
"I can confidently tell my guardian angel that my life is CAVU; and it will be until the day I die." George H.W. Bush passed away on Friday, November 30, 2018 at the age of 94.
Harry Houdini's Impulse to Escape
At age 33, Houdini began performing dangerous water escapes outdoors to promote his vaudeville shows around the country. His encore to escape not only appealed to thousands of spectators, but also brought people from foreign countries to escape from poverty and injustice.
Genetic Screening: Controlling Heredity
With every new advance in prenatal genetic screening, the ability to prevent suffering has also sparked difficult questions about what should count as “a disease” versus “a difference,” and whether we’re in danger of wiping out certain segments of the population. These fears arise, in part, because just 100 years ago, that’s exactly what a powerful movement—the eugenics movement—tried to do.
Thomas Hunt Morgan
Thomas Hunt Morgan was an American biologist and zoologist. He joined the board of the Eugenics Record Office when it was founded in 1904. But after a decade of crossing thousands of mutant fruit flies, Morgan made a startling discovery — that eugenics had no business informing American laws, and Morgan left the Eugenics Record Office.
The Eugenics Crusade: Trailer
The Eugenics Crusade tells the story of the unlikely — and largely unknown — campaign to breed a “better” American race, tracing the rise of the movement that turned the fledgling science of heredity into a powerful instrument of social control. Populated by figures both celebrated and obscure, The Eugenics Crusade is a revelatory portrait of an America at once strange and eerily familiar.
John Harvey Kellogg
John Harvey Kellogg was a doctor, nutritionist and businessman. Also a health reformer, he was obsessed with clean diet and exercise. For a time, he worked with leading eugenicist Charles Davenport to organize the Race Betterment Conference at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Expo in San Francisco.
P.G. Lowery and the Spread of African-American Music
P.G. Lowery grew up in a musical family. After training at the Boston Conservatory of Music, he joined the circus at the turn of the twentieth century. Lowery’s all-black band spread early African-American music wherever the circus performed.
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