Tavis Smiley Reports: Too Important to Fail

The news from the Middle East worsens daily into a nightmare scenario - one eerily foretold in 2012 as two young, unlikely Syrian activists launch a radical plan for bringing democracy to their country, besieged by the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime.

For 170 years, a Native American community has occupied Isle de Jean Charles, a tiny island deep in the bayous of Louisiana. They have fished, hunted, and lived off the land. Now the land that has sustained them for generations is vanishing before their eyes. Coastal erosion, sea level rise, and increasing storms are overwhelming the island. Over the last fifty years, Isle de Jean Charles has been gradually shrinking, and it is now almost gone. For these Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians, their land is more than simply a place to live. It is the epicenter of their people and traditions. They now must prepare to say goodbye to the place, where, for eight generations, their ancestors cultivated a unique part of Louisiana culture.

Follows animal rights lawyer Steven Wise in his unprecedented challenge to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans, by filing the first lawsuits that seek to transform a chimpanzee from a 'thing' with no rights to a 'person' with legal protections.

From Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Fisher Stevens and Academy Award-winning actor, environmental activist and U.N. Messenger of Peace Leonardo DiCaprio, Before the Flood presents a riveting account of the dramatic changes occurring around the world due to climate change, as well as the actions we as individuals and as a society can take to prevent catastrophic disruption of life on our planet.

In both 2006 and 2010 Mentor, Ohio was selected as one of America's Top 100 Cities to Live. But over those five years, an alarming number of teens from this proud upperclass enclave committed suicide. 'Mentor' follows the families of two victims as they uncover a shocking history of bullying at Mentor High School. They realize what their children already knew: going to class meant a daily battle simply to survive. The families join forces in search of answers and justice, filing an unprecedented lawsuit against the school district for the death of their children that is met with willful denial and destroyed evidence. Through unflinching storytelling, 'Mentor' captures just how disturbing and dangerous protecting the status quo can be.

Not since the invention of the Internet has there been such a disruptive technology as Bitcoin. Bitcoin's early pioneers sought to blur the lines of sovereignty and the financial status quo. After years of underground development Bitcoin grabbed the attention of a curious public, and the ire of the regulators the technology had subverted. After landmark arrests of prominent cyber criminals Bitcoin faces its most severe adversary yet, the very banks it was built to destroy.