Nova
NOVA brings you stories from the frontlines of science and engineering, answering the big questions of today and tomorrow, from how our ancestors lived, to whether parallel universes exist, to how technology will transform our lives. Visit the official website to watch full-length documentaries, or explore our world through short-form video, on our digital publication NOVA Next.
- 1974-2026
- 53 seasons
- PBS
- Documentary
- TV-PG
NOVA brings you stories from the frontlines of science and engineering, answering the big questions of today and tomorrow, from how our ancestors lived, to whether parallel universes exist, to how technology will transform our lives. Visit the official website to watch full-length documentaries, or explore our world through short-form video, on our digital publication NOVA Next.
Season 2 Episode Guide
17 Episodes 1974 - 1975
Episode 1
Why Do Birds Sing?
Sun, Nov 3, 1974
NOVA travels to forests and marshes to discover why birds sing and finds surprising parallels with the acquisition of speech in humans.
Episode 2
How Much Do You Smell?
Sun, Nov 10, 1974
NOVA explains how, for example, the entire economy of an ant's nest is organized by smell, and how some moths use smell for population control - an ability we are now beginning to understand.
Episode 3
The Hunting of the Quark
Sun, Nov 17, 1974
Smashing matter into ever smaller pieces in an attempt to find its fundamental building blocks has produced a confused nightmare of particles. NOVA looks at this on-again, off-again story.
Episode 4
The Secrets of Sleep
Sun, Nov 24, 1974
NOVA explores traditional notions about how much sleep we need; looks at effects of the sleeping pill, and, perhaps the most baffling of all aspects of sleep - dreaming.
Episode 5
Inside the Golden Gate
Sun, Dec 1, 1974
NOVA joins a team of U.S. Geological Survey scientists on a mission to find out just how San Francisco Bay works: its physics, its chemistry and its biology.
Episode 6
The Men Who Painted Caves
Sun, Dec 8, 1974
Just why did Cro-Magnon man living in France's Dordogne Valley some 15,000 years ago take time out from the desperate business of survival to paint pictures in inaccessible corners of his cave dwellings?
Episode 7
Red Sea Coral
Sun, Dec 15, 1974
NOVA joins a group of English biologists living on a platform in the middle of the Red Sea, who for several years have been studying the crown-of-thorns starfish, notorious for devastating the coral reefs of Australia and the Pacific.
Episode 8
War from the Air
Sun, Jan 5, 1975
NOVA explores how science and technology play a major role in the design of weapons of war and the development of strategies for their use.
Episode 9
What Time Is Your Body?
Sun, Jan 12, 1975
Have you ever sensed that your body reacts differently at different times of the day? NOVA examines the best and worse times for work, good times for sex drives and your body's most reactive time of day for alcohol consumption.
Episode 10
The Rise and Fall of DDT
Sun, Jan 19, 1975
Has the case against DDT been proven? A strange question, perhaps, to be asking one year after the US has banned the insecticide, but NOVA dares to ask. Tracing the history of DDT from its discovery through its banning in the States.
Episode 11
Take the World from Another Point of View
Sun, Feb 2, 1975
NOVA profiles two very different scientists: Richard Feynman, a theoretical physicist, at the pinnacle of his career, a Nobel prizewinner; and Richard Lewontin, a biologist and highly regarded population geneticist from Harvard University.
Episode 12
The Lysenko Affair
Sun, Feb 9, 1975
NOVA explores T.D. Lynsenko's rise to power in the Soviet Union in the early 20th century, and how it affected plant genetic research in the USSR.
Episode 13
The Tuaregs
Sun, Feb 16, 1975
High in the Hoggar Mountains of the Sahara desert, lives Sidi Mohammed and his family. Their environment, one of the most ungenerous on earth, provides them with almost nothing. NOVA examines the changing lifestyle of Sidi Mohammed.
Episode 14
The Plutonium Connection
Sun, Mar 9, 1975
How likely is it that a terrorist group will steal plutonium intended for nuclear reactor fuel and put together a homemade atom bomb? NOVA investigates just how easy it would be to design a bomb using unclassified information.
Episode 15
The Other Way
Sun, Mar 16, 1975
Since the Industrial Revolution, bigger has been better. NOVA profiles E.F. Schumacher, the author of Small is Beautiful, who thinks that enough is enough; that the time has come for technology to return to a human scale.
Episode 16
The Lost World of the Maya
Sun, Mar 30, 1975
For over a thousand years the Mayan civilization flourished in the rain forests of Central America. Discovered and finally destroyed by the Spanish Conquistadors, it was lost again until explorers brought it to light in the 19th century.
Episode 17
Will the Fishing Have to Stop?
Sun, Apr 6, 1975
Fish is an excellent source of protein; it could help ease the growing international food shortage. But in 1972 the total world fish catch dropped. NOVA explores the possible reasons for this decline.