This grant supports the production and airing of Your Brain, a two-hour NOVA television special about the latest developments in neuroscience. To be hosted by Heather Berlin, a neuroscientist, clinician, and science communicator, the special will use Berlin’s personal history, work with patients, and research on the neural basis of the unconscious as a frame for discussing a variety of important developments in neuroscience, including brain-machine interfaces, creating artificial brain tissue, understanding consciousness, and cutting-edge treatments for mental health disorders. Grant funds will support production of the special, along with associated promotion and outreach to ensure a wide, diverse audience.

Consumer 101 is an educational TV show, launched in 2018 and produced by Consumer Reports, that Тgives viewers a behind-the-scenes look into the science used to test every kind of product, from cars and smart televisions to payment apps and food.У Broadcast on NBC on Saturday morning and targeting 13- to 16-year-olds, the show aims to help teens turn themselves into smart consumers by showing them how things work, revealing tips to get the most out of everyday items, and providing them a window into unexpected career paths in science and technology. The show has reached an audience of over one million viewers. Funds from this grant support the production and broadcast of 10 segments of Consumer 101 focused on digital privacy and security. Possible topics include smartphone security, targeted ads and search protection, smart speakers, password managers, app permissions, online privacy traps, privacy solutions, and deleting old accounts on services one no longer uses. Additional grant funds will support promotion and outreach efforts for the produced segments on traditional and social media.

This grant provides support to WGBH Educational Foundation to research, produce, and broadcast four science- and technology-themed episodes on its popular, award-winning documentary history series American Experience. The four shows are “The Poison Squad,” based on Deborah Blum’s book about Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, chief chemist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whose dogged efforts to test the health effects of popular chemical food additives led to modern standards of food safety; “The Man Who Tried to Feed the World,” about Norman Borlaug, an Iowa agronomist who introduced innovative breeding techniques for wheat and overcame many obstacles to help feed millions in Mexico, Pakistan, and India; “The Codebreaker,” about Elizabeth Smith Friedman, cryptanalyst-in-charge for the U.S. Treasury Department, whose codebreaking skills helped bring down a Nazi spy network in South America; and “Mr. Tornado,” about Tetsuya Theodore “Ted” Fujita, professor of meteorology at the University of Chicago, who proved that tornadoes were not random but predictable and whose discovery of microbursts—intense downdrafts that caused airplanes to suddenly drop from the sky—led to life-saving advances in aviation.

This grant is to the Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association (WETA) to produce and air a three-part television documentary series, The Gene: An Intimate History. Produced by legendary documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and based on the critically acclaimed bestseller by physician and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History will use human case studies of the genetic treatment of illness to tell the story of genetic research while exploring its scientific, medical, social, and ethical implications. In addition to a three-hour documentary and associated website, the broadcast will be accompanied by a major public engagement effort around genetics, as well as a wealth of educational curricula.

This grant to the Catticus Corporation provides support for the production and broadcast of a one-hour documentary special on driverless cars, “Look Who’s Driving,” that will explore both the promise and pitfalls as we move toward adoption of autonomous vehicles (AVs). In addition to explaining the major technological advances that have enabled progress in AVs—mapping, sensing, and artificial intelligence—the series will explore the engineering, legal, regulatory, security, privacy, and ethical challenges behind this much-ballyhooed potential revolution in transportation. The documentary will include interviews and commentary from leading technologists and engineers working on AVs, as well as scholars, historians, research scientists, and ordinary citizens. The show is slated to be broadcast on the PBS series, NOVA.

This grant provides one year of support to the PBS NewsHour to continue its regular broadcast of Making Sen$e with Paul Solman, a weekly segment that explains business and economic issues clearly and engagingly to a general audience both on air and online. Grant funds support the production of 50 7-to-10-minute Making Sen$e broadcast segments on major issues facing the American and global economy, such as tax policy, health insurance, immigration, and the gig economy. Additional grant funds support increased outreach and development of the Making Sen$e website and social media presence, and the production of hundreds of original pieces of web native content, including long-form think pieces written by economists or based on Paul Solman's interviews with economists.

This grant to WNET, New York’s PBS station, in partnership with Windfall Films, supports the production and broadcast of a three-hour series about one of America’s biggest infrastructure projects: the rebuilding of LaGuardia airport, which is currently underway and slated for completion in 2021. Episode One: A Grand Terminal will focus on the state-of-the-art, 1.3-million-square-foot terminal itself, including its history and an overview of terminal design. Episode Two: Runways and Highways will cover building the runway space that surrounds the terminal, including flood-proofing the new taxiways—LaGuardia is surrounded on three sides by water—and preparing for environmental threats such as climate change and hurricanes. Episode Three: Bridges, Belts, and Baggage will explore the construction of two skybridges to get passengers from the new terminal to the 35 boarding gates as well as upgraded systems for moving baggage and passengers. The series will discuss a host of topics in science and engineering, including new construction techniques and machinery, the logistics of urban planning, impacts on local communities and the environment, tailoring runways to limit noise pollution, advanced radar technology to detect runway debris, and the use of swarm modeling mathematics to efficiently guide passengers and avoid congestion. In addition to primetime broadcast, grant funds support the production and dissemination of complementary educational resources through PBS Learning Media, and outreach through social and other media. 

This grant funds a project by WNET, working with physicist Brian Greene, the World Science Foundation, 59 Productions and CounterPunch Studios, to adapt the live stage piece “Light Falls: Space, Time, and an Obsession of Einstein” for broadcast on public television. The piece, which debuted at Lincoln Center during the 2016 World Science Festival and is narrated by Greene, traces Einstein’s journey to the discovery of the general theory of relativity. The piece walks the audience through the stages in Einstein’s journey—from his boyhood fascination with a compass to his desperate efforts to understand gravity to his fear that mathematician David Hilbert would beat him to the general theory. In addition to providing historical information about Einstein himself, the production will explain, explore, and make compelling key scientific ideas related to the general theory such as Lorentz contraction, time dilation, the equivalence principle, Riemannian geometry, and curved spacetime. The producers, working with the award-winning CounterPunch Studios, will also explore deploying a pioneering holographic rig that can generate a digital, life-like, three-dimensional rendering of Einstein so that Greene can interact and converse with a realistic looking historical figure. The completed production will be broadcast on the one hundredth anniversary of the 1919 solar eclipse measurements that confirmed Einstein’s theory and made him the most famous scientist in the world.