The BEST episodes of PBS Specials season 2015

#1 - Dick Cavett’s Vietnam

Season 2015 - Episode 11 - Aired 4/27/2015

On the 40th anniversary of the official end of the Vietnam War, this program examines the war and its impact on America through the prism of interviews conducted on “The Dick Cavett Show,” which featured thoughtful conversation and debate from all sides of the political spectrum. The program combines interviews from Cavett’s shows with archival footage, network news broadcasts and A/V material.

#2 - The Bomb

Season 2015 - Episode 18 - Aired 7/28/2015

The story of nuclear weapons, from the earliest A-bomb tests to their impact on global politics. Included: remarks from historians Richard Rhodes, Martin Sherwin, Robert Norris and Sergei Khrushchev; former secretary of state George Shultz; and former defense secretary William Perry. It began innocently enough. In 1938, two German chemists accidentally discovered how to split the nucleus of the uranium atom: nuclear fission. Einstein’s E=mc² equation predicted that the amount of energy released from just one atom would be enormous. Physicists all over the world immediately realized that fission might make a bomb of extraordinary power - and that Nazi Germany might be capable of creating one. The fear of Adolph Hitler getting a nuclear weapon led to a race to deter him by developing such a bomb first. Thus began a chain of events that would lead inexorably to Hiroshima, the nuclear arms race, the hydrogen bomb, the Cuban Missile Crisis and some of the greatest fear and tension ever in world history. The Bomb explores how what started as simple scientific curiosity ultimately resulted in a weapon capable of ending civilization. The invention, says historian Richard Rhodes, “Was a millennial change in human history: for the first time, we were now capable of our own destruction, as a species.” The program recounts the bomb’s history, as well as the successes, failures and moral dilemmas of the personalities who created it. We learn how it was developed and how it quickly changed everything, from international relations to politics, culture, even sex. No less than the discovery of fire, the bomb marks a dividing line in human history between all that came before it, and everything that follows. For the first time, humans acquired the ability to destroy themselves, and we are still struggling to learn how to live with this awesome power. Decades after it first appeared, the bomb has receded in the public consciousness — but it continues to shap

#3 - We Served Too: The Story of the Women's Airforce Service Pilots

Season 2015 - Episode 5 - Aired 3/8/2015

This is a story of a group of young, determined and courageous women during World War II who broke through barriers and shattered stereotypes...the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs).

#4 - The Legend of Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club

Season 2015 - Episode 4 - Aired 3/8/2015

The Legend of Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club chronicles the thrilling life and extraordinary times of aviation pioneer Florence Lowe "Pancho" Barnes, one of the most colorful and accomplished women pilots of the earliest 20th Century, and an ill-behaved woman who made history.

#5 - The Blizzard of '49

Season 2015 - Episode 31 - Aired 12/8/2015

This one-hour documentary film tells the story of "Storm of the Century: The Blizzard of '49" - the worst series of storms in Wyoming's history. But for all the tragedy and loss, suffering and death, there was also hope and heroism, unselfish sacrifice and generosity. The blizzard brought out the best in people. Wyoming citizens from all walks of life cooperated together and demonstrated exceptional ingenuity in the face of dire circumstances. There were extraordinary acts of kindness, with people generously giving their time and resources. The public worked together to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and ultimately won in the end.

#6 - The Mystery of Matter: Unruly Elements (1859-1902)

Season 2015 - Episode 20 - Aired 8/19/2015

Over a single weekend in 1869, a young Russian chemistry professor named Dmitri Mendeleev invents the Periodic Table, bringing order to the growing gaggle of elements. But this sense of order is shattered when a Polish graduate student named Marie Sklodowska Curie discovers radioactivity, revealing that elements can change identities — and that atoms must have undiscovered parts inside them.

#7 - Tahoe: A Visual History

Season 2015 - Episode 24 - Aired 9/17/2015

A documentary based on the exhibition of the visual history of Lake Tahoe and Donner region on display at the Nevada Museum of Art. The film follows the NMA’s journey to visually survey one of the most beloved landscapes like never before -- through the eyes of 175 painters, photographers, architects, basket weavers, and sculptors.

#8 - The Mystery of Matter: Into the Atom (1910-1960)

Season 2015 - Episode 21 - Aired 8/19/2015

Caught up in the race to discover the atom’s internal parts — and learn how they fit together — a young British physicist, Harry Moseley, uses newly discovered X-rays to put the Periodic Table in a whole new light. And a young American chemist named Glenn Seaborg creates a new element — plutonium — that changes the world forever, unleashing a force of unimaginable destructive power: the atomic bomb.

#9 - A Few Good Pie Places

Season 2015 - Episode 22 - Aired 8/25/2015

There are delicious pies for sale at shops, restaurants, cafes and roadside stands across America. So, in this delicious documentary we celebrate A Few Good Pie Places where people still make flaky crusts and scrumptious fillings. A Few Good Pie Places is a celebration, a travelogue and an hour-long portrait of some wonderful people across America who make and eat pies.

#10 - A Few Great Bakeries

Season 2015 - Episode 23 - Aired 8/25/2015

Bakeries are popular places. They smell great. They are full of wonderful things to eat, from crusty breads to gooey and sweet treats. And they often become neighborhood meeting places, where bakers work hard and where people often leave with good feelings as well as fresh baked goods. In this documentary, we celebrate A Few Great Bakeries across America, never claiming that this is a list of "Best Bakeries" but rather just a few warm ones worth checking out. All of these places seem connected by early mornings, long hours of hard work, delicious products and customers who love them. We happily celebrate these few bakeries and hope that everyone will be inspired to look for more great ones all across America.

#11 - America After Charleston

Season 2015 - Episode 25 - Aired 9/21/2015

Moderated by PBS NewsHour's Gwen Ifill, America After Charleston is a one-hour town hall meeting that explores the many issues propelled into public discourse after a white gunman shot and killed nine African-America parishioners in Charleston's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015.

#12 - E.O. Wilson: Of Ants and Men

Season 2015 - Episode 26 - Aired 9/30/2015

EO Wilson – Of Ants and Men is a two-hour film about the life and extraordinary scientific odyssey of one of America’s greatest living thinkers, E.O Wilson. It is an exciting journey of ideas, but also an endearing portrait of a remarkable man; often dubbed “a Darwin for the modern day.” Starting with his unusual childhood in Alabama, it chronicles the lifelong love for the natural world that led him to Harvard and the studies that would establish him as the world’s foremost authority on ants. But that was just the beginning. His discovery of ant pheromones in the 1960’s led him to start thinking about systems of communication in nature on a much grander scale. He was one of the first to start thinking about ecosystems, still a revolutionary concept at the time, and the ways different species fitted together inside them. His book, “Island Biogeography” and the word “biodiversity,” which he coined in the 1980’s, have since become the cornerstones of conservation biology, something he is very proud of.

#13 - Things that go Bump in the Night: Tales of Haunted New England

Season 2015 - Episode 27 - Aired 10/30/2015

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT details some of New England's most bone-chilling stories, myths and legends. Interviews with local authors and experts, along with personal accounts, reveal tales of the supernatural, the unexplained and the mysterious. The special features visits to the infamous Lizzie Borden home in Fall River, MA, the long-abandoned village of Dudleytown in northern Connecticut, the Hoosac Tunnel in the Berkshire Mountains, the New London Ledge Lighthouse, Bellcourt Castle in Newport, Rhode Island and a Union cemetery in Easton, CT - the sites of terrible tragedies, supposed curses and ghostly hauntings.

#14 - Iwo Jima: From Combat to Comrades

Season 2015 - Episode 28 - Aired 11/10/2015

#15 - Debt of Honor: Disabled Veterans in American History

Season 2015 - Episode 29 - Aired 11/10/2015

Disabled veterans hold a unique place in the history of veterans in the United States, one that palpably illustrates the human cost of war, and speaks to the enormous sacrifices of military service. Debt of Honor examines the way in which the American government and society as a whole have regarded disabled veterans throughout history, beginning in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War through today’s continuing conflicts in the Middle East.

#16 - Starting from Scratch: The Remarkable Life of John W. Barfield

Season 2015 - Episode 32 - Aired 12/16/2015

John W. Barfield is a rags to riches success story. This epic memoir tells how the work ethic and spiritual principles his family used to better themselves in the Alabama cotton fields, Pennsylvania coal mines and Michigan auto plants made him a consummate entreprenuer.

#17 - Off the Menu: Asian America

Season 2015 - Episode 30 - Aired 12/8/2015

What exactly does food reflect about Asian Pacific Americans? Off the Menu: Asian America grapples with how family, tradition, faith, and geography shape our relationship to food. The program takes audiences on a journey from Texas to New York and from Wisconsin to Hawaii using our obsession with food as a launching point to delve into a wealth of stories, traditions, and unexpected characters that help nourish this nation of immigrants.

#18 - In Defense of Food

Season 2015 - Episode 33 - Aired 12/30/2015

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." With that seven-word maxim, US-based journalist Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) distills a career’s worth of reporting into a prescription for reversing the damage being done to people’s health by today’s industrially driven Western diet. In Defense of Food debunks the daily media barrage of conflicting claims about nutrition. Traveling the globe and exploring the supermarket aisles to illustrate the principles of his bestselling “eater’s manifesto,” Pollan offers a clear answer to one of the most confounding and urgent questions of our time: What should I eat to be healthy?

#19 - Temples of Justice

Season 2015 - Episode 3 - Aired 2/26/2015

Temples of Justice visits 45 courthouses in South Dakota and tells the colorful stories of several. You'll find out how swindlers changed history, where there's a bullet hole in a judge's chamber, what cowboys did with their hats and which courthouses helped South Dakotans survive the Great Depression. The production is supported by a grant from the South Dakota Humanities Council.

#20 - The Mystery of Matter: Out of Thin Air (1754-1806)

Season 2015 - Episode 19 - Aired 8/19/2015

One of science’s great odd couples — British minister Joseph Priestley and French tax administrator Antoine Lavoisier — together discover a fantastic new gas called oxygen, overturning the reigning theory of chemistry and triggering a worldwide search for new elements. Soon caught up in the hunt is science’s first great showman, a precocious British chemist named Humphry Davy, who dazzles London audiences with his lectures, introduces them to laughing gas and turns the battery into a powerful tool in the search for new elements.

#21 - Humanity from Space

Season 2015 - Episode 17 - Aired 7/21/2015

Humanity from Space is an epic journey of discovery. Using the very latest mind-boggling data and astonishing CGI, the film traces the story of humankind’s ascent from hunter-gatherer to dominant global species. From the global perspective of space, this 2-hour special reveals the breathtaking extent of our influence, revealing how we’ve transformed our planet and produced an interconnected world of extraordinary complexity. A journey through 12,000 years, Humanity from Space shows how seemingly small flashes of innovation have changed the course of civilization; innovations that touch all of us today in ways unimaginable to our ancestors. And we’ll gaze into the future at the new challenges we’ll face in order to survive as our global population soars because of our success. In every case we’ll look at our progression in a unique and surprising way, revealing unforgettable facts and "who knew?" connections. To visualize these stories cutting-edge technology is used to turn raw data into authentic moving images, building on expertise from a previous (and highly-praised) project; "Earth From Space." Using this technique, we can map humanity’s behavior in stunning, never seen before detail, revealing how our civilization grew, how it works today and what the future might hold.

#22 - 1913: Seeds of Conflict

Season 2015 - Episode 16 - Aired 6/30/2015

Ben Loeterman, explores the little-known history of Palestine during the latter part of the Ottoman Empire, a time of relative harmony between Arabs and Jews. Living side by side in the multi-lingual, cosmopolitan city of Jerusalem, Jews, Christians and Muslims intermingled with a cultural fluidity enjoyed by all. How did this land of milk and honey, so diverse and rich in culture, become the site of today’s bitter and seemingly intractable struggle? Was there a turning point, a moment in time when things could have been different? Weaving the raveled threads of Arab and Jewish narratives back together, 1913: SEEDS of CONFLICT provides new and fascinating insights into the dramatic events that took place in Palestine which set the stage for the coming century of unrest.

#23 - Caring for Mom and Dad

Season 2015 - Episode 14 - Aired 5/7/2015

Americans are living longer than ever before. Seventy-five million baby boomers are entering their retirement years at a rate of 10,000 a day. The United States is not prepared for this unprecedented demographic shift--and the question we're now all facing is: who will care for this aging population when they can no longer care for themselves? Caring for Mom & Dad offers an intimate look at the issues facing family caregivers who are out on the front lines, struggling to balance work, families, and caring for their parents. Families from around the country share their stories as the film examines the physical, emotional, and financial tradeoffs facing working caregivers and their employers. The film also highlights innovative ideas and community-based programs that are supporting family caregivers by asking, "How can America adapt to this changing reality?"

#24 - Stories of Service: The Homefront

Season 2015 - Episode 15 - Aired 5/26/2015

More than two million men and women serve in America's all-volunteer military force, and another three million are their husbands, wives, sons and daughters. The Homefront uses unprecedented access to soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, to create a series of intimate portraits of America's military families. This documentary tells stories of pride and patriotism, sacrifice and resilience.

#25 - Rx: The Quiet Revolution

Season 2015 - Episode 7 - Aired 4/2/2015

A staggering 50 percent of American adults suffer from a chronic disease such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity and arthritis — and one in four has two or more chronic health conditions. In Rx: The Quiet Revolution, you’ll travel across America to discover a quiet revolution happening in medicine. From Maine to Mississippi, Alaska to California, see physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals placing the patient at the center of their practice — transforming the way medical care is delivered while lowering costs and improving outcomes.