NOVA: Season 19
Season 19 Lore Primer
Key plot threads, lore context, and character stakes you need to remember before diving into this season.
- Directly follows the overarching narrative developments of NOVA Season 18.
- Faction dynamics and core character alliances shift under escalating external stakes.
- Crucial mysteries introduced previously reach key turning points and narrative reckonings.
- Sets up serialized story arcs that build directly toward the climactic season finale.
Episode Guide
Season 19 Progress Shield
Hell Fighters of Kuwait
Jan 14, 1992 · 55 min
NOVA covers the fight to put out Saddam Hussein's bonfire of oil wells in Kuwait, which has created the worst manmade pollution event in history. Fire fighting teams from Houston a
Submarine!
Jan 21, 1992 · 55 min
NOVA takes a voyage on the newest of America's doomsday machines—the ballistic missle submarine USS Michigan. The Cold War may be won, but these submerged super arsenals continue t
Saddam's War on Wildlife
Jan 28, 1992 · 55 min
Few people give any thought to wildlife in the midst of a war. During the Gulf War, environmentalist John Walsh did his best to save animals from oil spills, bullets and other dang
What Smells?
Feb 11, 1992 · 55 min
The nose knows. How much is the subject of NOVA's investigation of the mysterious aromas and hidden messages picked up by our sense of smell. David Suzuki hosts.
Can You Believe TV Ratings?
Feb 18, 1992 · 55 min
Rating the audience for TV shows is a classic problem in statistical analysis. NOVA finds that ratings are getting more accurate but still are far from scientific.
Making a Dishonest Buck
Mar 3, 1992 · 55 min
Criminals still make money the old-fashioned way—by counterfeiting. NOVA looks at why US currency is so easy to fake and what the government is doing about it.
Rescuing Baby Whales
Mar 10, 1992 · 55 min
NOVA examines the mysterious whale strandings along the beaches of Cape Cod Bay, as the puzzling behavior becomes more common.
An Astronaut's View of the Earth
Mar 17, 1992 · 55 min
NOVA goes behind the scenes to watch the filming of a big-screen Imax/Omnimax space spectacle. Astronauts operate the cameras on location aboard the Space Shuttle.
Eclipse of the Century
Mar 24, 1992 · 55 min
The spectacular eclipse of 1991 passed over major observatories on the island of Hawaii. NOVA was there for 6 1/2 minutes of frenetic research that revealed new secrets about our s
Animal Olympians II
Aug 25, 1992 · 55 min
In a 90-minute special presentation, NOVA reveals the ancient secrets of how the pyramids were built by actually building one. A noted Egyptologist, Mark Lehner, and a professional
The Genius Behind the Bomb
Sep 29, 1992 · 55 min
Physicists Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard reenact the signing of the 1939 letter that alerted President Franklin Roosevelt to the feasibility of atomic weapons. Szilard drafted an
Mind of a Serial Killer
Oct 13, 1992 · 55 min
NOVA goes behind the scenes to give the real story behind the FBI unit popularized in the Academy Award-winning film, The Silence of the Lambs. Using a detailed psychological profi
Search for the First Americans
Oct 20, 1992 · 55 min
NOVA follows the trail of America's first inhabitants. Did they migrate across a Bering Sea land bridge at the end of the last Ice Age, as we all learned in school? Or did they arr
Rafting Through the Grand Canyon
Oct 27, 1992 · 55 min
NOVA explores Earth's greatest natural wonder by rafting down the river that created it, repeating the spectacular first canyon voyage of the 19th-century explorer John Wesley Powe
This Old Pyramid
Nov 4, 1992 · 55 min
In a 90-minute special presentation, NOVA reveals the ancient secrets of how the pyramids were built by actually building one. A noted Egyptologist, Mark Lehner, and a professional
Iceman
Nov 10, 1992 · 55 min
Five thousand years ago, a man perished in a mountain storm. In 1991, his frozen body was found along with artifacts of his vanished way of life. NOVA covers the international effo
Private Lives of Dolphins
Nov 17, 1992 · 55 min
NOVA delves into the deep sea drama of life among the dolphins at research stations in Florida and Australia. Like humans and chimpanzees, dolphins have evolved a sophisticated soc
Brain Transplant
Dec 1, 1992 · 55 min
Two paralyzed drug addicts travel to Sweden to receive a revolutionary treatment for brain disease that is largely unavailable in the US due to the ban on fetal tissue research. "B
Can You Stop People From Drinking?
Dec 22, 1992 · 55 min
NOVA looks at how Russia and the United States are attacking the intractable problem of alcohol abuse with old and new weapons—including prohibition, hypnotism, imprisonment, surve
Sex and the Single Rhino
Dec 29, 1992 · 55 min
NOVA examines the high-tech efforts to preserve the world's animal diversity. Noah needed only an ark—but today's conservationists need all the tools that biology, ecology, diploma