Modern Marvels

Cotton, a soft white fiber, has significantly shaped history, sparking wars, building empires and fueling the Industrial Revolution.

It pulls, stretches, bubbles, hardens, crunches and melts-and we eat about 7-billion tons of it yearly. We're talking about candy! We'll digest the latest and greatest candy sensations.

From drilling for water in the New Mexico desert to searching for oil in the Gulf, this episode penetrates the world of drilling and explores its colorful history.

From Apple computers to the Sony Walkman, remember all the new and exciting gadgets of the 1980s? Join us as we investigate the transition from Industrial to Information Age-a digital decade.

You may know him as a Founding Father-but now you'll get to know Benjamin Franklin as the late 18th century's foremost scientist, and one of the greatest inventors of any era.

Heavy metals including copper, uranium, lead and nickel are so essential to America's economic and military might that they are stored in the National Defense Stockpile. We plan a riveting visit.

Buckle up for a rip-roaring ride through the world of extreme horsepower. Experience the fastest cars on earth and meet the horsepower police who test today's most powerful engines.

An old-fashioned style of cooking, barbecue has evolved into a modern food craze and spawned a multi-billion dollar industry. We digest famous barbecue cook-offs and visit some famous BBQ restaurants.

Pintsized as a pea or big as a bowling ball, nutritional, durable, and versatile, nuts have been a staple of the human diet since time began, and archaeological evidence places them among our earliest foods.

After thousands of years, Egyptian mummies are speaking from the grave. We explore how today's technology allows mummies to be studied without being unwrapped.

It's nature's precious elixir. Explore water's multidimensional character--from the $10-billion bottled water industry to its critical role in a Canadian nuclear reactor.

It transports electricity, water and heat. Our bodies can't survive without it, yet it can kill microbes in minutes. We explore all things copper.

Explore the history of America's freight trains, and go inside what is considered the greatest freight transportation system in the world, the Union Pacific's Bailey Yard.

Its efficiency has produced billions of products cheaply and quickly. Follow the evolution of the assembly line, including its sometimes troubled relationship with the human beings who make it work.

It's ink and it's everywhere. From squid to soybeans, from ancient text to awesome tattoos, join us as we dip into the well for the 3,000-year history of ink.

The distillation of spirits is a 50 billion dollar a year business. We visit brandy, liqueur, moonshine and absinthe distilleries to see how this magic is done.

Discovered around 18,000 years ago, tobacco was first cultivated in the Andes. Includes interview with the Surgeon General, a look at smokeless methods of consumption and nicotine replacement therapy.

From Alexander Graham Bell's crude creation, to today's high-speed wireless networks, we'll look into the past, present and future of the telephone.

It slices and squeezes, mixes and cooks. Every morning we count on it to keep our orange juice fresh, our eggs whole and our McGriddle syrupy. We look at the technology behind breakfast food.

In America's orchards and fields, the constant struggle between hand labor and mechanization has produced dozens of efficient and sometimes bizarre harvesting methods.

Travel two miles into the sky, to the tops of mountains and to some of the finest ski resorts in the world to learn about the secrets of snow.

Visit some of the most famous Christmas displays in the world and learn about the technology powering them.