The Nature of Things

Season premiere: Anthropologist Richard Leakey discusses his work in Africa, and explains the latest techniques by which scientists measure time and age of subjects.

The phenomenon of man's changing concepts of the world is explored in relation to his desire to measure time more accurately.

A series of people of varying ages, professions and experiences express their innermost feelings on subjects ranging from dateless Saturday nights to fear of death.

A study of individual development and group dynamics in a troop of rhesus monkeys in the natural observable environment of Cayo Santiago near Puerto Rico.

The cliff-dwelling Dogon farmers and their unique culture are studied in their homeland near the Niger River in Mali.[261]

The current efforts in both the United States and Canada to harness the sun as a major resource of heat and power are examined.

The activities of the economic and social center of Sololá, located on Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, are viewed.[263]

Volunteers undergo an experiment at the Montefiore Sleep Lab in New York which monitors their sleeping-awakening cycles in an attempt to learn more about the body's biological time system.[264]

Analysis of dreams is viewed at several institutions established expressly for that purpose, and those who participate in the experiments are shown as they make notations and give recollections of what they dreamed.

Canadian paleontologist Charlie Sternberg and his work in cataloguing dinosaur fossils in the Albertan Badlands are profiled.

The Search follows World Health Organization medical teams on their campaign to vaccinate the against smallpox in Somalia, the world's last location where the disease survives.

The descendants of Nova Scotia's Acadians and their lifestyle are profiled at their adopted home, the Bayou Lafourche in southern Louisiana.