Highlights & Specials

Airs Saturday, July 4 at 6:00 PM - U.K. sensation Paolo Nutini and Austin’s Grupo Fantasma.

Airs Saturday, July 4 at 8:00 PM - Award-winning actor Jimmy Smits returns to host the biggest and brightest birthday party in the country, featuring Barry Manilow, who will both open and close the broadcast with a medley of hits and patriotic classics along with the National Symphony Orch

Airs Sunday, July 5 at 7:00 PM - Ian Wright travels to Morocco on the Northwestern tip of Africa. It's a country of stark desert, high mountain ranges, and some of the most richly cultured cities in the world.

Airs Sunday, July 5 at 8:00 PM - The king of the African savannah faces an uncertain future.

Airs Sunday, July 5 at 9:00 PM - When Miss Marple learns of the deaths of businessman Rex Fortescue, his young wife, Adele, and their housemaid, Gladys, the circumstances vividly recall the nursery rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence.”

Airs Monday, July 6 at 7:00 PM - A rare 18th-century Pennsylvania spice cupboard; a valuable mid-17th-century needlework piece; an early 20th-century oil painting by noted Pennsylvania impressionist George Sotter.

Airs Monday, July 6 at 8:00 PM - A gun that may have belonged to a member of Al Capone’s gang; a letter allegedly written by John Wilkes Booth’s father; and a device meant to guard against grave robbers.

Airs Monday, July 6 at 9:00 PM - Slapstick, always popular in America, has evolved into a sophisticated art. Featured: Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, Martin and Lewis, the Marx Brothers and the one and only Lucille Ball.

Airs Tuesday, July 7 at 7:00 PM - NOVA travels deep into Japan's ancient foundries, follows the craft of the traditional swordsmiths and attends samurai fighting school to reveal the art and science behind making what many call the perfect sword.

Airs Tuesday, July 7 at 8:00 PM - The Kepler telescope; discovering genes for Alzheimer’s and autism; using computers to authenticate paintings; profile of Maydianne Andrade

Airs Tuesday, July 7 at 9:00 PM - Jason Crigler’s life after a near-fatal brain hemorrhage.

Airs Wednesday, July 8 at 7:00 PM - Untangle the mystery of the first English settlement in America, where 116 settlers vanished from Roanoke Island more than 400 years ago.

Airs Wednesday, July 8 at 8:00 PM - Niall Ferguson examines how money evolved from a crude system of coins to a complex global financial system of credit, treasury bonds, hedge funds and credit default swaps that have shaped the course of human history.

Airs Thursday, July 9 at 7:00 PM - "Healing the Earth" is about one solution to global warming through carbon sequestration in grasslands worldwide. It is an answer that saves money, our food supply and most likely, our children's lives.

Airs Saturday, July 11 at 6:00 PM - Wallflowers leader Jakob Dylan followed by songwriter/violinist Carrie Rodriguez.

Airs Saturday, July 11 at 9:00 PM - A poor Jewish milkman (Topol) and his wife (Norma Crane) try to marry off their five daughters in czarist Russia.

Airs Sunday, July 12 at 7:00 PM - Globe Trekker traveller Zay Harding ski tours the legendary Haute Route from Chamonix to Zermatt.

Airs Sunday, July 12 at 8:00 PM - Polar bears, the descendents of grizzlies, long ago evolved to live and hunt on the frozen ice of the Arctic, but now are living on borrowed time as their habitat changes and food sources become increasingly rare.

Airs Sunday, July 12 at 9:00 PM - A woman on a train tells Miss Marple about a series of murders in her village. When the woman later falls to her death, Miss Marple vows to get to the bottom of the string of "accidents."

Airs Monday, July 13 at 7:00 PM - Alexander Calder maquette (scale model); a collection of Camera Work magazines, published in the early 20th century by Alfred Stieglitz; and a handcrafted chair by Charles Rohlf.

Airs Monday, July 13 at 8:00 PM - A child who may have been exhibited in an incubator at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair; an early movie mogul’s dramatic rise and fall; and a controversial design woven into a Navajo rug.

Airs Monday, July 13 at 9:00 PM - The most audacious comedians invoke “freedom of speech” to bring the biggest and most dangerous laughs to the American public. Featured: Mae West, Moms Mabley, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and George Carlin.

Airs Tuesday, July 14 at 7:00 PM - With unprecedented access, NOVA presents the inside story of the Parthenon's official restoration.

Airs Tuesday, July 14 at 8:00 PM - Two drugs that may aid kids with muscular dystrophy; demise of the dinosaurs; profile of Franklin Chang-Diaz; northern lights.

Airs Tuesday, July 14 at 9:00 PM - Follows dynamic International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo and his team for three years.

Airs Wednesday, July 15 at 7:00 PM - Wade into the alligator swamps of South Carolina to search for evidence of North America’s first human inhabitants.

Airs Wednesday, July 15 at 8:00 PM - Ferguson outlines the close relationship between money and war.

Airs Thursday, July 16 at 7:30 PM - My Friend Flicka, written in 1941, and made into a movie in 1943, was actually inspired by a ranch in Wyoming.

Airs Saturday, July 18 at 6:00 PM - Lucinda Williams, anointed "America’s best songwriter" by Time , and Nashville's Old Crow Medicine Show.

Airs Saturday, July 18 at 9:00 PM - A mute janitor (Jackie Gleason) befriends a Paris streetwalker (Katherine Kath) and her daughter, but a mob misunderstands him.