WASHINGTON WEEK

WITH GWEN IFILL FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17 @ 9:00AM THIS WEEK ON WASHINGTON WEEK: EBOLA RESPONSE, ISIS MOVEMENT, ECONOMIC RECOVERY, MIDTERM DEBATES Congressional lawmakers grilled health officials from Texas and the federal government about the U.S. response to Ebola, possible travel bans, and whether current protocols need to be changed during a combative hearing on Capitol Hill today.  Meanwhile, two...

GERSHWINS’ PORGY AND BESS

FROM SAN FRANCISCO OPERA SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18 @ 6:00PM In the 1920s, George Gershwin had an ambition to compose an American opera. In 1926, he read a powerful novel by an upper-class white South Carolinian, DuBose Heyward, called PORGY. Written the previous year, it was a series of vignettes of life in a black Charleston ghetto called Catfish Row, where a cripple named Porgy falls blindly in...

MASTERPIECE CLASSIC

THE PARADISE, SEASON 2 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16 @ 7:00PM Help wanted! There’s a high-profile vacancy at the Paradise, and applicants stream in as Katherine, Tom and Moray work to advance their own candidates — and interests. The clashes aren’t confined only to the store floor as Katherine and Tom debate what is in the best interest of young Flora. And Denise confronts a troubling question...

HOW WE GOT TO NOW

WITH STEVEN JOHNSON TIME WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15 @ 11:00PM Board a submarine with Steven Johnson to discover what a lack of natural light means for a sailor’s working day and visit Heathrow, the world’s busiest airport, to try to get timings right at air traffic control. The story of getting a grip on time is full of curious garage tinkerers. One of them, railway clerk William F. Allen, was so...

HOW WE GOT TO NOW

WITH STEVEN JOHNSON CLEAN WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM Dirty water has killed more humans than all the wars of history combined, but in the last 150 years, a series of radical ideas, extraordinary innovations and unsung heroes have changed our world. Steven Johnson plunges into a sewer to understand what made a maverick engineer decide to lift the city of Chicago with jackscrews...