Season 21

episodes

1. 1. Codebreakers 1994-01-18 55 min NOVA delves into the history of secret communications and the people who wrack their brains to decipher them. The program probes the most celebrated of all cryptographic coups: the breaking of the Wor...
2. 2. Dinosaurs of the Gobi 1994-01-25 55 min Velociraptors and primitive birds are among the fabulous fossil finds as NOVA accompanies an American Museum of Natural History expedition to the Gobi Desert. The trip relives the exploits of the Muse...
3. 3. Daredevils of the Sky 1994-02-01 55 min NOVA follows members of the US Aerobatic Team as they prepare for and compete in the 1992 World Aerobatic Championship. The sport, as precisely choreographed as gymnastics-except that it takes place i...
4. 4. Journey to Kilimanjaro 1994-02-08 55 min NOVA explores ice-capped mountains-on the equator. These African giants are magical islands of life towering above the scorched plains. Giant forest hogs, bearded vultures, the elusive bongo and other...
5. 5. Can Chimps Talk? 1994-02-15 55 min NOVA covers exciting and controversial research with chimpanzees who have been trained to express themselves with human symbols. Are they speaking their minds? Or are they just aping their trainers?
6. 6. In Search of Human Origins, Part One 1994-02-28 55 min In the first of a three-part series, noted anthropologist Donald Johanson probes the earliest ancestors of the human species - reaching back more than three million years to a strange ape who walked u...
7. 7. In Search of Human Origins, Part Two 1994-03-01 55 min Anthropologist Donald Johanson looks at how our human ancestors of two million years ago made their living. Contrary to popular myth, scavenging was a more lucrative living than hunting-and may have c...
8. 8. In Search of Human Origins, Part Three 1994-03-02 55 min At what point did our distant ancestors become anatomically like us? And, more importantly, when did they begin to act like us? Anthropologist Donald Johanson looks at what it is that makes us human.
9. 9. Can China Kick the Habit? 1994-04-12 55 min NOVA visits the most cigarette-addicted nation in the world-China. Western advertising and trading practices have exacerbated the fatal romance with smoking in the world's most populous country, where...
10. 10. Aircraft Carrier! 1994-04-19 55 min NOVA experiences the relentless, round-the-clock life aboard the US Navy aircraft carrier, Independence-where every day is a constant drill of launching and landing aircraft atop a floating city of 5,...
11. 11. The Great Wildlife Heist 1994-10-11 55 min Polly wants a crackdown when it comes to the illegal trade in the world's most beautiful and intelligent birds: parrots. NOVA goes undercover with a US government sting that breaks an international pa...
12. 12. Secret of the Wild Child 1994-10-18 55 min NOVA profiles "Genie," a girl whose parents kept her imprisoned in near total isolation from infancy. When social workers discoverd her as a teenager, Genie had not learned to walk or talk. This NOVA...
13. 13. Haunted Cry of a Long Gone Bird 1994-10-25 55 min NOVA explores the legacy of the great Auk, a magnificent flightless bird that was hunted to extinction over a century ago. In a journey retracing its migratory route, host Richard Wheeler kayaks from...
14. 14. What's New About Menopause 1994-11-01 55 min NOVA tackles the long-taboo subject of menopause, profiling new research and examining the medical and ethical controversies that arise when science enables women to postpone menopause or even to bear...
15. 15. The Tribe that Time Forgot 1994-11-08 55 min NOVA travels deep into the Amazon wilderness in search of a mysterious tribe- a tribe that dismembered and partially ate three prospectors in 1976. Locating the group, NOVA lives with them for three m...
16. 16. Killer Quake! 1994-11-15 55 min NOVA probes the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake. Even as the city struggles to repair itself from the tragedy, seismic pressure continues to build. Scientists fear that newly discovered faults could, at a...
17. 17. Buried in Ash 1994-11-29 55 min Ten million years ago, an enormous volcanic eruption buried much of what is now Nebraska in up to 10 feet of ash, preserving countless skeletons of prehistoric big game animals. NOVA joins the discove...
18. 18. Rescue Mission in Space 1994-12-06 55 min Hobbled by defective eyesight because of its original, bungled prescription, the Hubble Space Telescope was recently repaired in a dramatic Space Shuttle mission. NOVA follows the exploits of astronau...
19. 19. Journey to the Sacred Sea 1994-12-20 55 min NOVA travels to Lake Baikal, the world's oldest and deepest lake, containing one-fifth of all the fresh water on Earth. Investigating Baikal from above, below and all around, NOVA charts its dramatica...
20. 20. In Search of the First Language 1994-12-27 55 min NOVA explores the common threads that link the more than 5,000 languages of Earth, including a controversial theory that claims to reconstruct words from a time when only a handful of languages were s...