Category Archives: Program Highlights

JEAN-MICHEL COUSTEAU

OCEAN ADVENTURES

SEA GHOSTS

THURSDAY, JULY 14 @ 7:00PM & 10:00PM

There are places on this planet where it’s a marvel that anything survives. But in the arctic waters of the Far North, the sea is alive with sound. The canaries of the sea are singing. They’re beluga whales, named from the Russian word for “white ones.” They’re an evolutionary surprise — a warm-blooded mammal in a numbingly cold sea. Resembling curious ghosts, these intelligent mammals use one of the most complex sonars of any animal.


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NOVA

KINGS OF CAMOUFLAGE

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

Join NOVA on a voyage beneath the waves, where you’ll discover a bizarre, alien-like creature like no other. It’s an animal with eight sucker-covered arms growing out of its head, three hearts pumping its blue-green blood, and a doughnut-shaped brain. It has the ability to change its color and shape to blend in with seaweed and rocks, and it has a knack for switching on electrifying light shows that dazzle its prey. Perhaps most surprising of all, this animal is quite intelligent, with a highly complex brain. In this program, underwater cameras capture the extraordinary powers of the cuttlefish.


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POV

ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE

TUESDAY, JULY 12 @ 8:00PM & 11:00PM

The Khmer Rouge slaughtered nearly two million people in the late 1970s. Yet the Killing Fields of Cambodia remain largely unexplained. Until now. Enter Thet Sambath, an unassuming, yet cunning, investigative journalist who lost his family in the conflict and spends a decade gaining the trust of the men and women who perpetrated the massacres. From the foot soldiers who slit throats to Pol Pot’s right-hand man, the notorious Brother Number Two, Sambath and co-director Rob Lemkin record shocking testimony never before seen or heard, in Enemies of the People.


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MASTERPIECE MYSTERY!

MISS MARPLE

THE PALE HORSE

SUNDAY, JULY 10 @ 7:00PM & 11:00PM

Fair is foul and foul is fair in the hamlet of Much Deeping, where the Pale Horse Inn is run by a trio of entrepreneurial witches, and the annual celebration of the town’s witch trials of 1664 is about to commence. Arriving just in time is Miss Marple (Julia McKenzie, Cranford), who has set her knitting aside to pursue the murderer of her old friend, Father Gorman.


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AN AMERICAN FAMILY

AN AMERICAN FAMILY

LOUD STORY SHORT

THURSDAY, JULY 7 @ 6:00PM & 9:00PM

On Thursday evening, January 11, 1973 at 9:00 p.m., Americans stepped into the home of the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California. Chronicling the lives of its family members, the 12-hour documentary series made parents Pat and Bill Loud and their five children Lance, Delilah, Grant, Kevin and Michele Loud household names. During the seven months that they lived in front of the camera, viewers watched dramatic life events unfold, including Pat asking for a separation from her husband Bill, and the bohemian New York lifestyle of their gay son, Lance.


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NOVA

APE GENIUS

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12 @ 7:00PM & 11:00PM

At a research site in Fongoli, Senegal, a female chimpanzee breaks off a branch, chews the end to make it sharp, and then uses this rudimentary spear to skewer a tasty bush baby hiding inside a hollow tree. It’s an astonishing breakthrough for primate researchers—the first time anyone has documented a chimpanzee wielding a carefully prepared, preplanned weapon. But it’s only the latest in a slew of extraordinary new findings about ape behavior.


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POV

SWEETGRASS

TUESDAY, JULY 5 @ 8:00PM & 11:00PM

Sweetgrass presents a riveting and poetic portrait of the American West just as one of its traditional ways of life dies out. Shot amidst the grandeur of Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, the film follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into the breathtaking and often dangerous mountains for summer pasture. Magnificently photographed and unsparingly candid, Sweetgrass discovers a world of harsh beauty and arduous labor, where humans still work in rugged intimacy with nature.


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A CAPITOL FOURTH

A STAR-SPANGLED PARTY

MONDAY, JULY 4 @ 6:00PM, 9:00PM ,11:00PM & 12:30AM

Americas favorite Independence Day tradition will feature amazing performances topped off by the greatest display of fireworks anywhere. Jimmy Smits hosts Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers, Josh Groban, Matthew Morrison (Glee), Jordin Sparks, Little Richard and the cast of Million Dollar Quartet, Kelli O Hara, and the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Jack Everly.


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MASTERPIECE MYSTERY!

POIROT

HALLOWE’EN PARTY

FRIDAY, JULY 8 @ 7:30PM & 12:30AM

“I saw a murder once…I did! I did!” boasts a clumsy, disliked girl at a Halloween party. For this, she is ridiculed and dismissed. But before the party’s end, she is dead, snuffed out in an apple-bobbing tub. Party guest Ariadne Oliver — never again to consume another apple — summons her old friend Hercule Poirot for help and the gallant sleuth is only too happy to oblige.


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NOVA

What Are Dreams?

Wednesday, June 29 @ 7:00pm & 10:00pm

What are dreams and why do we have them? NOVA joins leading dream researchers as they embark on a variety of neurological and psychological experiments to investigate the world of sleep and dreams. Delving deep into the thoughts and brains of a variety of dreamers, scientists are asking important questions about the purpose of this mysterious realm we escape to at night. Do dreams allow us to get a good night’s sleep? Do they improve memory? Do they allow us to be more creative? Can they solve our problems or even help us survive the hazards of everyday life?


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