NOVA (Season 29)

Search for a Safe Cigarette (Episode 1)

Writer: Carl Charlson

Air date: 2001-10-02

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: The program chronicles the tobacco industry's decades long effort to create a "safer" cigarette.

18 Ways to Make a Baby (Episode 2)

Writer: Sarah Holt

Air date: 2001-10-09

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: The program investigates the brave new world of assisted reproduction.

Secrets of the Mind (Episode 3)

Writer: Christopher Rawlence

Air date: 2001-10-23

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: This NOVA program delves into the mind-tingling efforts of neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran to discover how the brain works.

Sex: Unknown (Episode 4)

Air date: 2001-10-30

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: The film investigates the complicated world of gender identity.

Russia's Nuclear Warriors (Episode 5)

Air date: 2001-11-06

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: NOVA takes an intimate look at the men who are in control of Russia's nuclear missiles, standing just a heartbeat from the top Russian politicians and Armageddon. Hosted by Vladimir Pozner, Russia's top television journalist, this startling film shows that despite low pay and the tedious existence that these soldiers and their families live with, these men are motivated by a strong sense of patriotic duty and responsibility for the ultimate powers of destruction at their fingertips, in a job that requires complete perfection.

Bioterror (Episode 6)

Writer: Matthew Collins

Air date: 2001-11-13

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: The film follows three New York Times reporters as they delve into the murky past of bioweapons research and grapple with the current threat of anthrax and other attacks.

Life's Greatest Miracle (Episode 7)

Writer: Julia Cort

Air date: 2001-11-20

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: A sequel to the most popular NOVA of all time, "Miracle of Life," the program once again uses the extraordinary microimagery of Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson to track human development from embryo to newborn.

Methuselah Tree (Episode 8)

Air date: 2001-12-11

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: Marked by striking imagery and a poetic style, the film dramatizes the life cycle of the world's oldest living thing, the bristlecone pine of California's White Mountains.

Flying Casanovas (Episode 9)

Writer: David Attenborough

Air date: 2001-12-25

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: The program, with Sir David Attenborough narrating, celebrates the extraordinary antics male bowerbirds get up to when courting a female.

Death Star (Episode 10)

Air date: 2002-01-08

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: The program probes the deep mysteries of gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful celestial explosions since the big bang.

Neanderthals on Trial (Episode 11)

Writer: Mark Davis

Air date: 2002-01-22

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: The film probes the enigma of our Neanderthal cousins and the roots of our own ancestry.

Fireworks (Episode 12)

Air date: 2002-01-29

Runtime: 55 min

Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies (Episode 13)

Air date: 2002-02-05

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: The program chronicles the lives and covert activities of the so-called "atom spies" in the 1940's, including the big one that got away, Theodore Alvin Hall.

The Missing Link (Episode 14)

Air date: 2002-02-26

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: A paleontological tour-de-force and suspenseful scientific detective story, the program documents the search for the ancestor of all four-limbed animals, including humans.

Shackleton's Voyage of Endurance (Episode 15)

Writer: Sarah Holt

Air date: 2002-03-26

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: In October and November 1999, NOVA journeyed into ice-choked Antarctic waters and onto the shores of rugged Elephant and South Georgia Islands as we followed in the footsteps of Sir Ernest Shackleton. This legendary explorer's 1914-1916 Endurance expedition is one of the greatest survival stories of all time. Then, in April 2000, we returned to document Shackleton's final trial -- the crossing of South Georgia -- by three of the world's most distinguished mountaineers, Reinhold Messner, Conrad Anker and Stephen Venables. Follow the expeditions as they unfolded in real-time on this Web site, and also watch for a NOVA Giant Screen Film Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure, as well as a NOVA program, "Shackleton's Voyage of Endurance," which originally aired on March 26, 2002.

Why the Towers Fell (Episode 16)

Air date: 2002-04-30

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: Can lessons learned from the Twin Towers' collapse make new buildings safer?

Fire Wars (Episode 17)

Writer: Rushmore DeNooyer

Air date: 2002-05-07

Runtime: 55 min

Overview: In the program, NOVA accompanies the men and women of a wildland firefighting crew known as the Arrowhead Hotshots as they battle one of the most destructive wildfire seasons ever, the summer of 2000.