THE FOUR-WINGED DINOSAUR

TUESDAY, AUGUST 24 @ 6:00PM

In 2002, the discovery of a beautiful and bizarre fossil astonished scientists and reignited the debate over the origin of flight. With four wings and superbly preserved feathers, the 130 million-year-old creature was like nothing paleontologists had ever seen before.

In this program, NOVA travels to the Chinese stone quarry where the fossil was discovered–a famed fossil treasure-trove –and teams up with the world’s leading figures in paleontology, biomechanics, aerodynamics, animation, and scientific reconstruction to perform an unorthodox experiment: a wind tunnel flight test of a scientific replica of the ancient oddity.
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Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio

MONDAY, AUGUST 23 @ 8:00PM & 11:00PM

Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio is a documentary film on the late architect Samuel Mockbee and the radical educational design/build program known as the Rural Studio.

Hale County, Alabama is home to some of the most impoverished communities in the United States of America. It is also home to Auburn University’s Rural Studio, one of the most prolific and inspirational design-build outreach programs ever established. Citizen Architect is a documentary film chronicling the late Samuel Mockbee, artist, architect, educator and founder of the Rural Studio.
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Rhinoceros

SUNDAY, AUGUST 22 @ 6:00PM & 10:00PM

Among the most ancient of animals, rhinoceroses thrived for millions of years before meeting their most deadly enemy: humans.

During the past century, the rhinos of Africa and Asia have been pushed out of their habitats and hunted nearly to extinction for their horns, which are believed — erroneously — to possess healing properties. Now, thanks to the efforts of conservationists and scientists, the rhinos are on their way back.

With NATURE’S Rhinoceros, wildlife filmmaker Nigel Marven brings you face-to-face with the world’s five species of rhino, each struggling, with varying degrees of success, for their continued survival. For some rhinos, the future may rely on breeding programs, such as at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens, where Sumatran rhinoceros Emi is now nearing the end of her third successful pregnancy, having already given birth to Andalas and Suci, the only two Sumatran rhinos ever to be born in captivity.
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SOUTH PACIFIC

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18 @ 6:00PM & 11:00PM

Opening on Broadway on April 7, 1949, South Pacific racked up a total of 1,925 performances over a period of more than 5 years. Since then it has had numerous revivals the world over, has been twice made into a feature film, and a 2006 concert version from Carnegie Hall was shown on PBS’s Great Performances series. Amazingly, however, Lincoln Center Theater’s current run of South Pacific in the Vivian Beaumont Theater, a run which is now longer than 2 years, is the work’s VERY FIRST Broadway revival.

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LIZARD KINGS

SUNDAY, AUGUST 11 @ 8:00PM

They look like dragons and inspire visions of fire-spitting monsters. But these creatures with their long claws, razor-sharp teeth, and muscular, whip-like tails are actually monitors, the largest lizards now walking the planet. With their acute intelligence, these lizards—including the largest of all, the Komodo dragon—are a very different kind of reptile, blurring the line between reptiles and mammals. Thriving on Earth essentially unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs, they are a very successful species, versatile at adapting to all kinds of settings. This program looks at what makes these long-tongued reptiles so similar to mammals and what has allowed them to become such unique survivors.

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Master of American Sculpture

MONDAY, AUGUST 16 @ 8:00PM & 11:00PM

Throughout the United States there are thousands of parks in which can be found bronze and marble statues of the major historical figures of times past. Taken from a mostly European sensibility, these monuments are testaments to their subjects and to the times in which they were sculpted. Among the greatest American sculptors and monument builders of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
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INSPECTOR LEWIS, SERIES II

THE POINT OF VANISHING

FRIDAY, AUGUST 27@ 7:30PM & 10:30PM

Steven Mullan is found dead in his bathtub, the scalding water indicative of the white-hot rage that motivated the murder. Lewis recognizes Mullan as having been recently released from prison after having tried to kill celebrity atheist Tom Rattenbury while driving drunk. Mullan’s sentence may be over, but have the scars healed for the Rattenburys, especially daughter Jessica who remains in a wheelchair from the incident? Lewis and Hathaway find a postcard at the crime scene of a Renaissance painting inscribed with the words, “It was no dream.” But the case is about to take a surreal, dream-like twist, leaving Lewis and Hathaway drowning in questions about crimes of the past and the present.

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IN SEARCH OF MY GRANDFATHER

WORTH DOING ONCE

SATURDAY, AUGUST 28 @ 6:00PM

Winston Churchill’s quest for his inner self took two forms: a constant thirst for exotic travel and a passion for the exuberance of painting and the beauty of words. His granddaughter Celia Sandys traveled extensively with Churchill towards the end of his life. In this intimate portrait, she follows in her grandfather’s footsteps. By examining his art and literature, viewers will understand his dreams and anxieties and share his innermost thoughts. Sandys travels to France, Cuba, South Africa, the United States, Egypt and Morocco.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11

BECOMING US @ 6:00PM & 9:00PM

SO HUMAN, SO CHIMP @ 7:00PM & 10:00PM

BRAIN MATTERS @ 8:00PM & 11:00PM

After some three and a half billion years of life’s evolution on this planet – and after almost two million years since people recognizable as human first walked its surface – a new human burst upon the scene, apparently unannounced.

It was us.

Until then our ancestors had shared the planet with other human species. But soon there was only us, possessors of something that gave us unprecedented power over our environment and everything else alive. That something was – is – the Human Spark.

What is the nature of human uniqueness? Where did the Human Spark ignite, and when? And perhaps most tantalizingly, why?

In a three-part series to be broadcast on PBS in 2010, Alan Alda takes these questions personally, visiting with dozens of scientists on three continents, and participating directly in many experiments – including the detailed examination of his own brain.

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