The BEST episodes directed by Chris Schmidt

#1 - Making Stuff Stronger (1)

NOVA - Season 38 - Episode 2

What is the strongest material in the world? Is it steel, Kevlar, carbon nanotubes, or something entirely new? NOVA kicks off the four-part series "Making Stuff" with a quest for the world's strongest substances. Host David Pogue takes a look at what defines strength, examining everything from steel cables to mollusks to a toucan's beak. Pogue travels from the deck of a U.S. naval aircraft carrier to a demolition derby to the country's top research labs to check in with experts who are re-engineering what nature has given us to create the next generation of strong stuff.

#2 - Making Stuff Smaller (2)

NOVA - Season 38 - Episode 3

How small can we go? Could we one day have robots taking "fantastic voyages" in our bodies to kill rogue cells? The triumphs of tiny are seen all around us in the Information Age: transistors, microchips, laptops, cell phones. Now, David Pogue takes NOVA viewers to an even smaller world in "Making Stuff: Smaller," examining the latest in high-powered nano-circuits and micro-robots that may one day hold the key to saving lives.

#3 - World In The Balance: China Revs Up (2)

NOVA - Season 31 - Episode 9

#4 - Hunting the Elements

NOVA - Season 39 - Episode 8

Where do nature’s building blocks, called the elements, come from? They’re the hidden ingredients of everything in our world, from the carbon in our bodies to the metals in our smartphones. To unlock their secrets, David Pogue, the lively host of NOVA’s popular "Making Stuff" series and technology correspondent of The New York Times, spins viewers through the world of weird, extreme chemistry: the strongest acids, the deadliest poisons, the universe’s most abundant elements, and the rarest of the rare—substances cooked up in atom smashers that flicker into existence for only fractions of a second.

#5 - Arctic Dinosaurs

NOVA - Season 35 - Episode 11

A field expedition to collect new fossil clues on Alaska's North Slope reveals details of the lives of polar dinosaurs.

#6 - Arctic Passage: Prisoners of the Ice

NOVA - Season 33 - Episode 6

NOVA recreates the expeditions of Sir John Franklin and Roald Amundsen, two Arctic explorers who set out to find the legendary Arctic sea route known as the Northwest Passage.