Airing Monday nights at 9 pm on RIPBS!

October 1
companion show: 1980 Diamond vs. Chakrabarty

THE BOTANY OF DESIRE – brings Michael Pollan’s best-selling book of the same name to television, showing how human desires are an essential, intricate part of natural history. The program explores the natural history of four plants – the apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato – and the corresponding human desires – sweetness, beauty, intoxication and controlling nature – that link their destinies to our own.

October 8
companion show: 1992 First Critical Mass Ride

CONTESTED STREETS – explores the history and culture of New York City streets from pre-automobile times to the present. This examination allows for an understanding of how the city – though the most well served by mass transit in the United States – has slowly relinquished what was a rich, multi-dimensional conception of the street as public space to a mindset that prioritizes the rapid movement of cars and trucks over all other functions. Central to the story is a comparison of New York to what is experienced in London, Paris and Copenhagen. Interviews and footage shot in these cities showcase how limiting automobile use in recent years has improved air quality, minimized noise pollution and enriched commercial, recreational and community interaction. London’s congestion pricing scheme, Paris’ BRT (bus rapid transit) and Copenhagen’s bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure are all examined in depth. New York City, though to many the most vibrant and dynamic city on Earth, still has lessons to learn from Old Europe.

October 15
companion show: 1936 Chaplin’s Modern Times

MODERN TIMES (Janus Films) – Chaplin’s last ‘silent’ film, filled with sound effects, was made when everyone else was making talkies. Charlie turns against modern society, the machine age, and progress. Firstly we see him frantically trying to keep up with a production line, tightening bolts. He is selected for an experiment with an automatic feeding machine, but various mishaps leads his boss to believe he has gone mad, and Charlie is sent to a mental hospital…When he gets out, he is mistaken for a communist while waving a red flag, sent to jail, foils a jailbreak, and is let out again. We follow Charlie through many more escapades before the film is out

October 22
companion show: 1965 Griswold vs. Connecticut

MILLER CENTER FORUM #1304 Michelle Goldberg: The Global Battle Over Reproduction – Michelle Goldberg is a journalist and author based in Brooklyn, New York. Her most recent book is “The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World” and won last year’s J. Anthony Lukas Work in Progress Award. Researched in four continents, “The Means of Reproduction” tells the story of the global battle for reproductive rights, and argues that the oppression of women is the great human rights issue of our time. Goldberg is also the author of the “New York Times” bestseller “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.” She is a columnist for “The Daily Beast,” and her work has appeared in the “New Republic,” the “American Prospect,” “The Nation,” “Glamour,” “The Los Angeles Times” and many other publications.
October 29
companion show: 1992 The Invasion of the Body Scanner

FRONTLINE #3009 MURDOCH’S SCANDAL – Over half a century Rupert Murdoch’s business audacity and political shrewdness built one of the world’s most powerful media empires. Now his dynasty is under threat — not from outside competition but from shocking accounts of bribery, blackmail and invasion of privacy. The scandal has prompted criminal investigations on both sides of the Atlantic. It has also cracked open the insular world of the Murdoch family, its news executives, and the political elite who court their favor. Today, the 80-year-old owner of the Wall Street Journal and FOX News Channel is in the fight of his life. In a joint production with the CBC, FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman tells the story of the battle over the future of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s reputation and his family’s fortunes.

November 5
companion show: 1908 Lewis Hine Documents Child Labor

AMERICA AND LEWIS HINE — Documentary about early 20th-century photographer Lewis Hine, who helped to expose grim working conditions in American factories and mines, especially the abuse and exploitation of children by their employers. Later, he became the official photographer for the construction of the Empire State Building.

November 12
companion show: 1944 FDR’s 2^nd Bill of Rights Speech

CIVIL CONSERVATION CORPS: AMERICAN EXPERIENCE – In March 1933, within weeks of his inauguration, President Franklin Roosevelt sent legislation to Congress aimed at providing relief for the one out of every four American workers who were unemployed. He proposed the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to provide jobs in natural resource conservation. Over the next decade, the CCC put more than three million young men to work in the nation’s forests and parks, planting trees, building flood barriers, fighting fires and maintaining roads and trails. Corps workers lived in camps under quasi-military discipline, and received a wage of 30 dollars per month, 25 of which they were required to send home to their families. This film tells the story of one of the boldest and most popular New Deal experiments, positioning it as a pivotal moment in the emergence of modern environmentalism and federal unemployment relief.

November 19
companion show: 1971 Powell Memo

FRONTLINE #3014H – In an encore presentation from the acclaimed series “Money, Power and Wall Street,” FRONTLINE explores how an “epidemic of greed” spread from financial institutions in the United States to Europe and back. Correspondent Martin Smith (College, Inc., The Madoff Affair) reveals a trail of complex deals that contributed to a European crisis that today threatens to sink the global economy into another slump. Almost four years after the meltdown, FRONTLINE examines how regulators have tried to fix an industry steeped in conflicts of interest, excessive risk taking and incentives to cheat. New rules and regulations are being written, but can they prevent the next crisis?