The BEST episodes of Explorer season 2011

#1 - The Last Days of Osama Bin Laden

Season 2011 - Episode 14 - Aired 11/30/2011

CNN Correspondent Peter Bergen travels to Afghanistan to interview key players and reveals never-before-told facts that tell the real story of Bin Laden's final moments.

#2 - American Hostage

Season 2011 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/17/2011

Its everyone's worst nightmare. Kidnapped in a foreign country. Held indefinitely in horrific conditions, at the mercy of political forces and the will of extremists. Now, on the 20th anniversary of his release, Explorer goes inside this shadow world with America's most iconic hostage - journalist Terry Anderson - who was held for nearly 7 years in Lebanon by radical Muslims. Anderson's fellow hostages, his family and the man who risked everything to free him take us inside one of the most harrowing experiences imaginable.

#3 - Lost Cannibals of Europe

Season 2011 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/24/2011

Cannibalism has long been considered a dark chapter in man's history. Yet we think of it only as isolated occurrences. Now a Neolithic burial pit in Germany, found filled with expertly butchered human remains, challenges those assumptions. Archaeologists have never seen anything like it the deeper they dig, the more bizarre the scene becomes. EXPLORER joins an international team of experts as they reopen the earth to understand the violent events as they played out seven thousand years ago

#4 - How to Build a Beating Heart

Season 2011 - Episode 3 - Aired 2/7/2011

Imagine the implications if we could regenerate damaged, aging or diseased body parts grown from our own cells custom made, and genetically indistinguishable from our own. Could it eliminate the death sentence for profound birth defects, the need for prosthetics and any shortage of transplant organs? EXPLORER delves into the science of tissue engineering and shows how scientists are beginning to harness the body's natural powers to grow skin, muscle, body parts and vital organs, even hearts

#5 - Clash of the Americas

Season 2011 - Episode 4 - Aired 2/14/2011

It may have been one of the most cataclysmic geologic events of the last 60 million years, which shaped America as we know it today. The narrow, 400-mile-long Isthmus of Panama, once buried below the sea, rose up and connected North and South America. This new land bridge unleashed an astonishing animal encounter: Prehistoric predators and prey each unique to their worlds came face-to-face for the first time.

#6 - The Angel Effect

Season 2011 - Episode 6 - Aired 4/26/2011

A 9/11 survivor, an astronaut and a blue hole diver - all survived dramatically different traumatic events only to tell strikingly similar stories: each felt a mysterious presence that guided them to safety in their time of greatest peril. But what were these strange presences? Can they be explained? The devout call them guardian angels or divine encounters - others encounter a kind stranger. Could they have been angels? Phantoms? Or were their minds just playing tricks on them? EXPLORER delves deep inside this phenomenon to break down the barrier between science and the supernatural. When faced with life and death, the brain flips an "angel switch," and help arrives-at least for some. Dubbed the "Third Man Factor," hundreds have reported this mysterious phenomenon - and now, science is taking a closer look, zeroing in on the location and the mechanism in the brain they believe may be responsible for these visions.

#7 - Mystery of the Murdered Saints

Season 2011 - Episode 5 - Aired 4/19/2011

For the first time, the Catholic Church will allow scientific experts and historians to openly test the veracity of the remains of reported saints. NGC has exclusive access to the forensic investigation. Deep in the crypt below the Cathedral of Reggio Emilia lie a set of bones believed to be those of two ancient saints, Chrysanthus and Daria. For more than 1,500 years they've been hidden away ... until now.

#8 - Megapiranha

Season 2011 - Episode 7 - Aired 5/3/2011

Piranhas - the stuff of nightmares and legends. Theyre infamous for how fast they can devour prey, and are known to attack in groups of up to 100. Now, a team of scientists is heading to the Amazon to investigate a piranha mystery of immense proportions. A fossil of a giant jaw fragment has been identified as an ancient piranha, but with a terrifying twist: the tooth belonged to a fish seven times the size of existing piranha species.

#9 - Crime Lords of Tokyo

Season 2011 - Episode 9 - Aired 5/10/2011

Explorer takes an evocative look at Tokyo's infamous organized crime syndicate known as the yakuza. We'll go inside this secretive underworld to meet the real yakuza, and the law enforcement officers responsible for tracking them down. Incredible personal stories and candid interviews reveal a corrupt organization with its own code of honor and ethics. Insiders recall haunting stories of severed pinkies and physical sacrifices.

#10 - Stormageddon

Season 2011 - Episode 10 - Aired 5/29/2011

Historic snows and bitter cold across North America. Massive floods in Australia and Pakistan. Deadly mudslides in Brazil. Epic drought and wildfires in Russia. 2010 was one of the most destructive years in history. Now, Explorer presents the dramatic images of this catastrophic weather year — and introduces the people who risked their lives to capture them on film.

#11 - Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes

Season 2011 - Episode 8 - Aired 5/10/2011

The discovery of a human skull in the depths of Lake Superior begins a story that will take historian and author Brendon Baillod across two Great Lakes and a century of history. It takes him and a team of elite technical divers more than 20 miles off Milwaukee where they discover the wreck of one of Lake Michigan's lost queens. It takes them to the remote waters of Lake Superior where they risk their lives to determine the identity of yet another lost ship. And it takes us into the forgotten life of a brave and stubborn woman who lived, and died, on these wild waters. Whether her presence cursed these lost ships, or a more earthly explanation can be found, the Great Lakes reputation as a graveyard for mariners stands firm.

#12 - JFK: The Lost Bullet

Season 2011 - Episode 11 - Aired 11/20/2011

Join a team of pioneering investigators as they bring the eyewitness films of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to life, and expose the hidden secrets of the crime of the century.

#13 - Hitler's GI Death Camp

Season 2011 - Episode 15 - Aired 12/18/2011

Deep inside the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, newly discovered artifacts, photographs and journals tell the story of 350 American GIs who were held as prisoners of war in one of Hitler's most secretive slave labor camps, known as Berga. There, the soldiers lived and died alongside European Jews—many becoming grim statistics in Hitler's Final Solution. But miraculously, their will to survive and even to fight back at the Nazis remained strong. Now, 60 years later, these survivors from Berga have come forward to tell an unforgettable story of dogged survival, heroism and unparalleled courage.

#14 - How to Build an Ancient Man

Season 2011 - Episode 12 - Aired 11/23/2011

A tuft of tangled human hair is dug out of Greenlands permafrost. From these 4,000-year-old threads of evidence, scientists attempt the impossible to be the first to reconstruct the identity of a Stone Age human being. From the scraps of DNA, an ancient face appears. But as they break into this genetic code, they find far more than they bargained for, and the discovery threatens to turn our long-held concept of how humans populated the earth, on its head.

#15 - To Catch a Smuggler

Season 2011 - Episode 13 - Aired 11/27/2011