This program tells the story of how Christianity became the world's largest religion. Christianity in Mexico includes ancient indigenous concepts that have been adapted in what is now a genuinely Mexican faith. In Africa, the pattern was the same: missionary efforts came to little, wrecked by European social and cultural arrogance. And we learn that today's fast-growing African Christianity is far older than the missionary movement. In Ethiopia Christian...

More than 10% of Americans have German blood in their veins. Their ancestors came as religious and political refugees, but their dream of building a German society within America was largely shattered by the two world wars.

This program consists of five versions of the same short story, "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin, who scandalized American readers in the late 19th century by questioning the social and marital mores of her time. The story examines the behavior and feelings of a woman on the day she is informed of her husband's death. The program includes a reading of the story by Zoe Wanamaker, plus dramatizations by playwrights Kathleen Potter, David Stafford,...

Since Darwin's day, explanations for the causation of evolution have come and gone, Lamarckism, mutationism, and the existence of a built-in mechanism driving to perfection all dismissed for lack of evidence and the proofs of molecular biology. Ernst Mayr examines and evaluates the modifications and adaptations to Darwin's theory of natural selection, to determine whether the resulting synthesis is indeed still Darwin's theory.

Around 1850, the vast fertile lands of the Midwest attracted nearly a million farmers from Norway, where land was scarce and often unfit to farm. Their life as pioneers was hard, but their descendants have prospered.

From the Czarist persecutions to those of Hitler, America provided a haven for Jews. Their influx made New York the world's most densely populated city. They went on to become one of the most influential immigrant groups in America.

A fifth of London's population in the year 1600 were regular playgoers. Examination of the Globe Theatre shows where they stood, how the stage was constructed, and how the special effects so beloved by the audience were achieved, from thunder and lightning to fairies flying through the air and ghosts emerging from the earth. Rehearsals were minimal and there was no producer or director-just the play, the actors, and the audience of two to three thousand,...

Christianity is now over 2,000 years old. Yet today in the West it faces its greatest challenge--modernity and the rapid rise of the secular society. Can Christianity survive in the West? In the final episode of the series, practicing Catholic and leading barrister Cherie Blair examines how Christianity has fared in the face of World Wars, unprecedented suffering and monumental social change. While Christianity is marginal in Western Europe, it is...

Sir Andrew Huxley-grandson of Darwin's great defender, Thomas Huxley-describes Darwin's motivations, discoveries, and search for a logical theory to explain his observations of both geological and biological evidence in South America, focusing on Darwin's importance as the first to present strong, scientific evidence for descent with modification and to posit a plausible mechanism for its occurrence, namely natural selection.

Distinguished evolutionary biologists among the auditors of the foregoing lectures take on not only Luther Sutherland.