Learn & Play

New York’s Adirondack Park is larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and Great Smokies National Parks combined. Even more amazing, most of the land within the park is privately owned, and 85 million people live within a day’s drive. Yet the Adirondacks seem entirely undeveloped. How did that happen? The founding of the Adirondack Park Agency, 50 years ago, was truly, A Wild Idea.

In this five-part series, NOVA delves into the vastness of space to capture moments of high drama when the universe changed forever. In "Age of Stars," join the spectacular voyage to discover the sun’s place in a grand cycle of birth, death and renewal that makes this the age of stars.

In the 1930s, William Randolph Hearst’s media empire included 28 newspapers, a movie studio, a syndicated wire service, radio stations and 13 magazines. Nearly one in four American families read a Hearst publication. Perhaps best known as the inspiration for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and his lavish castle in San Simeon, Hearst died in 1951 at the age of 88, having transformed the media’s role in American life and politics.