THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE, from award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, tells the story of the five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in New York City's Central Park in 1989. This Peabody…
"Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants." With those seven words, journalist Michael Pollan distills a career's worth of reporting into a prescription for reversing the damage being done to people's health by today's industrially-driven Western diet. Pollan offers a…
Based on her personal diary, this program presents a dramatic exploration of the life of Martha Ballard, a woman who lived through the economic boom and bust, and political and social turmoil of the decades following the American Revolution.
The story of the birth of the modern Women's Movement. When Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique came out in 1963, millions of American women felt the constraints of 1950s post-war culture, which confined them to the home or to low-paying,…
Slavery by Another Name, narrated by Laurence Fishburne, is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans' most cherished assumptions: that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to…
This unique program lets viewers experience the frustration, anxiety, and tension faced by children with learning disabilities. Workshop facilitator Richard Lavoie presents a series of striking simulations emulating daily experience of LD children. Teachers, social workers, and parents, workshop participants,…
In 1851, word spreads across the country of a beautiful area of California's Yosemite Valley, attracting visitors who wish to exploit the land's scenery for commercial gain and those who wish to keep it pristine. Among the latter is a…
In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. Such raids were not unusual in the late 1960s, an era when homosexual…
This documentary tells the story of the Buddha's life, a journey especially relevant to our own bewildering times of violent change and spiritual confusion. It features the work of some of the world's greatest artists and sculptors, who across two…
When Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was published in 1962, the book became a phenomenon. A passionate and eloquent warning about the long-term dangers of pesticides, the book unleashed an extraordinary national debate and was greeted by vigorous attacks from the…
Thanks to social media, today's teens are able to directly interact with their culture--artists, celebrities, movies, brands, and even one another--in ways never before possible. But is that real empowerment? Or do marketers still hold the upper hand? In Generation…
FRONTLINE spent months following three young girls who are growing up against the backdrop of their families' struggles against financial ruin. At a time when one in five American kids lives below the poverty line, Poor Kids is an is…
The Black Atlantic explores the truly global experiences that created the African American people. Beginning a full century before the first documented slaves arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, the episode portrays the earliest Africans, both slave and free, who arrived on…
Vietnamese revolutionaries led by Ho Chi Minh end nearly a century of French colonial occupation. Vietnam is divided in two. Communists in the North aim to reunify the country, while America supports Diem's untested regime in the South.
In 1621, Massasoit, sachem of the Wampanoags of New England negotiated a treaty with Pilgrim settlers. A half-century later, as a brutal war flared between the English and a confederation of Indians, this diplomatic gamble seemed to have been a…
In the turbulent 1960s, change was coming to America and the fault lines could no longer be ignored -- cities were burning, Vietnam was exploding, and disputes raged over equality and civil rights. A new revolutionary culture was emerging and…
For 50 years radio dominated the airwaves and the American consciousness as the first "mass medium." In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the lives of three extraordinary men who shared the primary responsibility…
Face it: We're fat.
With 66 percent of U.S. adults either overweight or obese, our girth is a serious public health issue. Yet many of us still view being overweight as a character flaw, a lack of self-control, or even…
Where did we come from? What makes us human? An explosion of recent discoveries sheds light on these questions, and NOVA's comprehensive, three-part special, "Becoming Human," examines what the latest scientific research reveals about our hominid relatives. Part 1, "First…
Frontline follows renowned New Yorker writer and Boston surgeon Atul Gawande as he explores the relationships doctors have with patients who are nearing the end of life. The film investigates the practice of caring for the dying, and shows how…
