COLD WARRIORS: WOLVES AND BUFFALO

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30 @ 6:00PM & 10:00PM

For thousands of years, wolves have hunted buffalo across the vast North American plains. Although westward settlement of the continent saw the virtual extinction of these vast herds and their eternal predators, this ancient relationship was not lost altogether. On the northern edge of the continent’s central plains, in a place named Wood Buffalo National Park, buffalo and wolves still engage in epic life and death dramas. By following one pack of wolves, wildlife filmmaker Jeff Turner captures how these two animal species live together in what seems like a forgotten corner of the world.

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EARTH FROM SPACE

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

“Earth From Space” is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. Produced in extensive consultation with NASA scientists, NOVA takes data from earth-observing satellites and transforms it into dazzling visual sequences, each one exposing the intricate and surprising web of forces that sustains life on earth. Viewers witness how dust blown from the Sahara fertilizes the Amazon; how a vast submarine “waterfall” off Antarctica helps drive ocean currents around the world; and how the sun’s heating up of the southern Atlantic gives birth to a colossally powerful hurricane.  (2 HOURS)

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CLIFFHANGER

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14 @ 7:00PM

FRONTLINE investigates the inside history of how Washington has failed to solve the country’s problems of debt and deficit. Drawing on interviews with key players in Congress and the White House, FRONTLINE shows how a clash of politics and personalities has taken the nation’s economy to the edge of the “fiscal cliff,” and now to a second round of standoffs over the debt ceiling and sequestration.

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JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

SATURDAY, JUNE 22 @ 9:00PM

“The Rockefellers” is the saga of four generations of a legendary American family whose name is synonymous with great wealth.

The story begins in the Christian revivalist fervor of the 1830s with a marriage of opposites: Eliza Davison, a pious young woman, and “Devil Bill” Rockefeller, swindler, snake-oil salesman, and eventually, bigamist. Their son, John D. Rockefeller, created an industrial empire — and a personal fortune — on a scale the world had never known. He ruthlessly crushed his competitors in the process, alienating the public and leaving a stain on the family name.

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WITH GWEN IFILL

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8 @ 9:00PM

This Week: Drone Strikes, S&P Lawsuit and GOP Reinvention

A confidential Justice Department memo explaining the justification for targeting U.S. citizens involved with terrorist groups overseas with drone strikes became public this week.  After a number of legal experts and lawmakers raised concerns about the legality ofthe operation, the White House agreed to release classified documents to Congress explaining the administration’s rationale.  Carrie Johnson of NPR will report on the targeted-killing policy and how decisions about these types of attacks are made by the CIA and Defense Department.

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HAMLET WITH DAVID TENNANT

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

To be, or not to be: that is the question. David Tennant meets fellow actors who’ve taken on Hamlet and compares notes on how to play a character that’s been played, probably, a million different ways.

An acclaimed Hamlet in a recent Royal Shakespeare Company production, Tennant looks into the text about the doomed Danish Prince alongside the actors Jude Law, Simon Russell Beale and Ben Whishaw.

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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

Alby Hurwit is a doctor whose lifelong passion for music led him to compose one symphony, with the clock ticking on his ability to complete another.

Lifecasters explores the dramatic stories of Americans living beyond the spotlight, outside of the mainstream. Compelling people whose lives defy categorization, who contribute rarely heard, unique voices to our culture.

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BUILDING PHARAOH’S CHARIOT

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 28 @ 10:00PM

Around 3,600 years ago, reliefs in Egyptian tombs and temples depict pharaohs and warriors proudly riding into battle on horse-drawn chariots. Some historians claim that the chariot launched a technological and strategic revolution, and was the secret weapon behind Egypt’s greatest era of conquest known as the New Kingdom. But was the Egyptian chariot really a revolutionary design?

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THE MYSTERIOUS LOST STATE OF FRANKLIN

MONDAY, AUGUST 26 @ 12:30AM

The Mysterious Lost State of Franklin, a half-hour documentary, chronicles the creation and demise of the State of Franklin, a pivotal yet oft forgotten post-Revolutionary War rebellion and attempted secession. Due to tax burdens, the state of North Carolina ceded its western land to the U.S. Government. Feeling abandoned, some of the citizens of the ceded territory — the counties of Washington, Sullivan and Greene — began their own government and called themselves the State of Franklin, named after the esteemed statesman Benjamin Franklin.

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SILICON VALLEY

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

In 1957, decades before Steve Jobs dreamed up Apple or Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, a group of eight brilliant young men defected from the Shockley Semiconductor Company in order to start their own transistor business. Their leader was 29-year-old Robert Noyce, a physicist with a brilliant mind and the affability of a born salesman who would co-invent the microchip — an essential component of nearly all modern electronics today, including computers, motor vehicles, cell phones and household appliances.

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