WORLD Channel
Experience the personal stories behind the headlines. Devoted to telling stories that humanize complex issues, WORLD shares the best of public media in news, documentaries, and informational programming that helps us understand conflicts, movements and cultures. WORLD's focus is on its original content, offering a national platform to makers examining issues too often ignored by mainstream media.
Episodes
Specials
-
Episode
Against All Odds: The Fight for a Black Middle Class
Probing the harsh and often brutal discrimination that has made it extremely difficult for African-Americans to establish a middle-class standard of living. Through dramatic historical footage and deeply moving personal interviews, AGAINST ALL ODDS: THE FIGHT FOR A BLACK MIDDLE CLASS explores the often frustrated efforts of black families to pursue the American dream.
-
Episode
America Lost
AMERICA LOST explores America’s “forgotten cities” - Youngstown, OH, Memphis, TN and Stockton, CA. Through a series of stories, the film shows the dramatic decline of once prosperous communities. The film sheds light on how crumbling economic and social institutions have created a gap between the haves and have nots while also offering hope for rebuilding America’s “forgotten” from the bottom up.
-
Episode
Battleground
An exploration of the state of our democracy as seen through the eyes of opposing grassroots political activists in Lehigh Valley, PA - a pivotal county that voted for Obama twice and then flipped to Trump. Tom Carroll is a Trump delegate and Greg Edwards is a leader supported by Bernie Sanders. When their paths collide, Tom and Greg realize they have much more in common than meets the eye.
-
Episode
Burning Questions: Covering Climate Now
Will we act in time? Extraordinary journalists report on stories of struggle and resilience from around the world as families from Iowa to Senegal lose everything they care about to drought, fire and rising seas. Co-hosted by NBC Today’s Al Roker and NBC News’ Savannah Sellers, this climate special explores who is paying the price while world leaders dawdle and corporate interests resist change.
-
Episode
Drawn Together: Comics, Diversity and Stereotypes
With a lively backdrop of superheroes, comic books and animated comics, DRAWN TOGETHER: COMICS, DIVERSITY and STEREOTYPES brings together three talented artists - Keith Knight, Vishavjit Singh and Eileen Alden - who are challenging racist stereotyping endemic in America through their work. The film encourages viewers to look beyond the obvious, confront media prejudices and unlearn stereotyping.
-
Episode
Elevate, Incubate & Demonstrate: Asian American Artists
Asian American filmmakers made history again at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Industry leaders discussed the current and future state of Asian Americans in media at the ELEVATE, INCUBATE & DEMONSTRATE: ADVANCING ASIAN AMERICAN ARTISTS panel in Park City, Utah with guests, including Justin Chon (Gook), Lisa Nishimura, Grace Lee (American Revolutionary...) and Effie Brown (Dear White People).
-
Episode
Eyes on the Prize: Then and Now
A re-examination of the series, EYES ON THE PRIZE, from the filmmakers’ perspective, and viewpoint of civil rights activists then and now. This intergenerational dialogue takes the civil rights movement and places it under a microscope – revisiting, reframing and re-asking key questions while contextualizing those issues in a contemporary way.
-
Episode
Inventing Tomorrow: Air
In one of Mexico’s most polluted cities, high school students Jesús Martinez, José Elizalde and Fernando Sanchez invent a paint that can remove pollutants from the air, which takes them all the way to the world-famous ISEF science fair.
-
Episode
Inventing Tomorrow: Water
As the lakes in her hometown of Bangalore, India fill with clouds of chemical foam that drift through the streets, student Sahithi Pingali creates a “citizen science” project that lets anyone measure and share water quality data, propelling her to the renowned ISEF science fair in Los Angeles.
-
Episode
Our New Normal: : How Teens are Redefining School Life
From vaccination and mask mandates to mental health and curriculum protests, students in America are seeking a new normal amid the ongoing chaos created by the pandemic. So what do they have to say about it? In an hour-long special, PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs (SRL) will explore how teens are searching for stability and redefining school life.
-
Episode
Relocation, Arkansas: Aftermath of Incarceration
In 1942, nearly 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were forced into prisons because they looked like the enemy. Two of those prison camps were in Arkansas, a land of deep racial divide. RELOCATION, ARKANSAS: AFTERMATH OF INCARCERATION weaves remarkable stories into a tale of prejudice and perseverance, hurt and healing, and ultimately, the triumph of reconciliation.
-
Episode
Resistance at Tule Lake
The dominant narrative of the World War II incarceration of Japanese-Americans has been that they behaved as a “model minority” - cooperating without protest and proving their patriotism by enlisting in the Army. RESISTANCE AT TULE LAKE overturns that myth by telling the long-suppressed story of Tule Lake Segregation Center.
-
Episode
The Conversation Remix: For Our Girls
FOR OUR GIRLS, a love letter from mothers to daughters, explores the stigmas Black girls face as they grow up within and outside their community. Through interviews, mothers share concerns with how they are shaping and impacting their daughters' independence. The film acknowledges the sacred, and at times, tense relationship that parent and child share as they face challenges and accept flaws.
-
Episode
The Conversation Remix: Good White People
Following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, a family in the mostly homogeneously white Adirondacks community in New York shares their views on race and anti-racism. GOOD WHITE PEOPLE examines the current state of white identity, how it's changed from five years ago, and where it is headed. Can white people truly commit to what is required of them to create a more equitable anti-racist future?
-
Episode
The Conversation Remix: Learning to Breathe
LEARNING TO BREATHE is the sequel to the 2015 New York Times Op-Doc 'A Conversation About Growing Up Black' where Black boys, teens, and young men shared their thoughts about race in America. Five years later, the young men return to compare and contrast how their relationships with racial justice, systemic racism, and social inequity & inequality have changed following the death of George Floyd.
-
Episode
The Road to Decolonization
As ethnic, gender, and power dynamics become redefined throughout American culture and society at large, independent film faces similar challenges in finding its way forward. Join this forward-looking conversation with leading industry thinkers to consider and construct a more just and equitable future.
-
Episode
Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn explore the causes and costs of addiction, poverty and incarceration plaguing America, from the inner city to small towns like Yamhill, Oregon. While pockets of empathy and aid exist, are they enough to rescue the thousands of Americans in despair, for whom the American Dream of self-reliance is impossibly out of reach?
-
Episode
Two Dollars and a Dream
TWO DOLLARS AND A DREAM is the biography of Madame C.J. Walker, America's first self-made millionairess. Mrs. Walker's fortune was built on skin and hair care products, parlaying a homemade beauty formula into a prosperous business from coast to coast. By interweaving social, economic and political history, the film also offers a view of black America from 1867 to the 1930s.
-
Episode
Warrior Women
During the American Indian Movement, mothers & daughters like Madonna Thunder Hawk & Marcy Gilbert fought for indigenous rights, protecting families and their way of life. WARRIOR WOMEN explores what it means to balance a movement with motherhood as the activist legacy is passed down from generation to generation in the face of a government that has continually met native resistance with violence.
-
Episode
We the Young People
Highlighting the impact of young voters and exploring the change they want to see from the new U.S. presidential administration. The special features teen voices and leading journalists covering topics such as youth activism, civics, and misinformation. WE THE YOUNG PEOPLE is designed to connect with new audiences and deepen conversations about the most pressing issues in the country.
