NOVA Season 29, Episode 17: Fire Wars

Search for a Safe Cigarette

The program chronicles the tobacco industry's decades long effort to create a "safer" cigarette.

55 min

18 Ways to Make a Baby

The program investigates the brave new world of assisted reproduction.

55 min

Secrets of the Mind

This NOVA program delves into the mind-tingling efforts of neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran to discover how the brain works.

55 min

Sex: Unknown

The film investigates the complicated world of gender identity.

55 min

Russia's Nuclear Warriors

NOVA takes an intimate look at the men who are in control of Russia's nuclear missiles, standing just a heartbeat from the top Russian politicians and Armageddon. Hosted by Vladimir Pozner, Russia's top television journalist, this startling film shows that despite low pay and the tedious existence that these soldiers and their families live with, these men are motivated by a strong sense of patriotic duty and responsibility for the ultimate powers of destruction at their fingertips, in a job that requires complete perfection.

55 min

Bioterror

The film follows three New York Times reporters as they delve into the murky past of bioweapons research and grapple with the current threat of anthrax and other attacks.

55 min

Life's Greatest Miracle

A sequel to the most popular NOVA of all time, "Miracle of Life," the program once again uses the extraordinary microimagery of Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson to track human development from embryo to newborn.

55 min

Methuselah Tree

Marked by striking imagery and a poetic style, the film dramatizes the life cycle of the world's oldest living thing, the bristlecone pine of California's White Mountains.

55 min

Flying Casanovas

The program, with Sir David Attenborough narrating, celebrates the extraordinary antics male bowerbirds get up to when courting a female.

55 min

Death Star

The program probes the deep mysteries of gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful celestial explosions since the big bang.

55 min

Neanderthals on Trial

The film probes the enigma of our Neanderthal cousins and the roots of our own ancestry.

55 min

Fireworks

55 min

Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies

The program chronicles the lives and covert activities of the so-called "atom spies" in the 1940's, including the big one that got away, Theodore Alvin Hall.

55 min

The Missing Link

A paleontological tour-de-force and suspenseful scientific detective story, the program documents the search for the ancestor of all four-limbed animals, including humans.

55 min

Shackleton's Voyage of Endurance

In October and November 1999, NOVA journeyed into ice-choked Antarctic waters and onto the shores of rugged Elephant and South Georgia Islands as we followed in the footsteps of Sir Ernest Shackleton. This legendary explorer's 1914-1916 Endurance expedition is one of the greatest survival stories of all time. Then, in April 2000, we returned to document Shackleton's final trial -- the crossing of South Georgia -- by three of the world's most distinguished mountaineers, Reinhold Messner, Conrad Anker and Stephen Venables. Follow the expeditions as they unfolded in real-time on this Web site, and also watch for a NOVA Giant Screen Film Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure, as well as a NOVA program, "Shackleton's Voyage of Endurance," which originally aired on March 26, 2002.

55 min

Why the Towers Fell

Can lessons learned from the Twin Towers' collapse make new buildings safer?

55 min