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13 Episodes 1974 - 1974
Episode 1
Sun, Mar 3, 197454 mins
NOVA premieres on public television with a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a nature film. Oxford Scientific Films Unit shows how it tackles such problems as filming a wood-wasp laying its egg inside trees, etc.
Episode 1
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
Sun, Mar 10, 1974
This episode takes a look at the Colorado River and its impact on the lives of the people living in the Southwestern states. The story also looks at how human development has caused environmental degradation of the river such that the once mighty river doesn't drain into the sea anymore.
Episode 2
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
Sun, Mar 17, 197460 mins
NOVA explores the impact of whaling and the goods it produces for the industry, verses the grace and beauty of this intelligent mammal of the sea.
Episode 3
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
Sun, Mar 24, 197460 mins
Does life exist outside this planet? The Viking lander will set down on Mars in July 1976 to try to find out just that. NOVA explores how life started on Earth and examines the Viking Lander being built before starting its long journey.
Episode 4
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
Sun, Mar 31, 1974
How does a primitive nomadic tribe of the Amazon basin cope with the encroachment of Western settlers? NOVA looks at both sides of the story, revealing the misunderstandings between the two cultures.
Episode 5
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
Sun, Apr 7, 197460 mins
The story honored the men who revolutionized medicine in the 19th century by the discovery of anesthesia.
Episode 6
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
Sun, Apr 14, 1974
In 1054 AD, the Chinese recorded the explosion of a star so bright that it lit the sky for three weeks, even during the day. NOVA explores this mysterious explosion that led to the discovery of Crab Nebula.
Episode 7
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
Sun, Apr 21, 1974
Birds migrate in search of perpetual summer, sometimes traveling as much as 20,000 miles every year. NOVA uses radar to track and identify migrating birds that travel at night, focusing on how they choose routes that avoid bad weather.
Episode 9
Sun, Apr 28, 1974
The advance of medicine depends on the testing of experimental procedures on human volunteers. NOVA examines how individuals' interests are safeguarded, and asks, under what circumstances experiments should be conducted on children.
Episode 10
Sun, May 5, 1974
Washoe is a chimp more like a person: she talks with her hands. NOVA visits with Washoe and her teachers - Professor Allen Gardner and Dr. Trixie Gardner - to learn more about this unusual animal.
Episode 11
Sun, May 12, 1974
Paul Kammerer committed suicide in 1926, it was taken as a tacit admission of guilt that he had faked his experiments showing the inheritance of acquired characteristics. NOVA does an in-depth examination of Kammerer's infamous experiment.
Episode 12
Sun, May 19, 197460 mins
NOVA tells the story of the twists and turns and the international competition along the road toward the achievement of nuclear fusion; and details the recent breakthroughs which seem at last to have brought it within reach.
Episode 13
Sun, May 26, 1974
Who were the people that built the first cities in North America? They were the Anasazi Indians, who lived in the Southwest for some nine thousand years and then, around 1300 AD, abruptly abandoned their cities and apparently disappeared.