With the assistance of sketches, photos, and a reenactment of John Brown's trial and indictment, Dr. C. Vann Woodward, history professor at Johns Hopkins University, describes the details of John Brown's failed slave insurrection of 1859 and sketches in the historical and biographical background. A copy of Brown's "Provisional Constitution and Ordinances" is shown and Brown's famous trial speech is recited. Dr. Woodward concludes with comments on whether the end justified the means.

The program opens with performer Elizabeth Hughes singing the folk song "Lord Randall" with dulcimer accompaniment. Lynn Poole briefly discusses southern Appalachian mountain folk lore and how music records the heritage of the people. Virgil Sturgill describes the origins and characteristics of folk songs such as "Billy Grimes," sung by Ms. Hughes. The ballad "Barbara Allen" can be traced to the mid-1600s in Scotland, with several versions of the tragic fate of the rejected lover evolving over time and continents. Mike Seeger sings one version with a fiddle; Larry Marxer performs another variant with guitar; and Ms. Hughes sings still another with dulcimer. Mr. Sturgill shows the typical instruments played in the Appalachians: melodian or autoharp, dulcimer, banjo, guitar, harmonica, mandolin, whistle, and fiddle, and Seeger plays "Black Mt. Rag" on the latter. The performers sing answering back songs, such as "Billy Boy"; Bible stories, such as "Little Moses"; and songs about local events.

Lynn Poole points out the country's increasing need for engineers, scientists, technicians, and researchers. Dr. John Woodburn, assistant director of the Johns Hopkins masters in teaching program, offers courses to working teachers wanting an advanced degree. He maintains that teachers can interest children in science by exposing them to the phenomena of nature, asking questions, teaching them to notice things around them, and showing them the scientific principles in everyday things. To illustrate, teacher Jacqueline Wolfe performs a simple experiment, and students in her fifth grade class from Woodmore School in Baltimore, MD, observe, hypothesize, test tentative hypotheses, and verbalize final conclusions. Dr. Woodburn suggests that other teaching aids, such as microscopes, telescopes, blocks, and models, also stimulate young minds.

Lynn Poole shows a chart of epochs and notes that man didn't appear until the Pleistocene period. Dr. George Carter, department chair and professor of geography at Johns Hopkins University, discusses the possibility of a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska across the Bering Strait, based on human tools found with mastodon remains. Likewise, zoologist R.G. Gilmore has discovered that animals crisscrossed the Bering Strait between ice periods. In describing the history of the study of pre-history, Dr. Carter names W.H. Holmes and Ales Hrdlicka as men who led the opposition to the previously generally accepted belief in the existence of a glacial age man in America. With Willard F. Libby's 1951 discovery that all living things contain radioactive carbon, remains could be dated, challenging previous beliefs. From evidence such as stone tools, Dr. Carter speculates that man entered America about 40,000 years ago. He creates a timeline based on the degree of skill in making tools, the degree of weathering on tools, and the date of the existence of the lake where the tools were found. Dr. Carter also discusses physical geography and carbon-14 dating of tools along the southern California coast. Using charts and photos, he shows how reading California river valley records also yields data about sea level, climate, and glaciers. In the controversial Texas Street site in San Diego, Dr. Carter claims he has discovered hearths, crude stone tools, and dart points corresponding to the last interglacial period.

Lynn Poole shows photos of a variety of computers from desk-size to house-size. Dr. Robert Rich, supervisor of the computer center at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab, explains the workings of an electromechanical punch card accounting system, which is an externally programmed device. He shows an oversized punch card and photos of keypunch, sorting, and accounting machines. He notes that this process has speed limitations, but internally programmed computers have both speed and versatility of input. Dr. Rich describes the operation of a model of a UNIVAC business computer, which he says resembles an IBM 700 or Datamatic 1000. Such a computer is most efficient in routine computations on large numbers of data for such purposes as banking, weather forecasting, inventory control, etc. Scientific applications, such as missile flight paths, require a human programmer to write complex sets of instructions for the computer.

This program, in the form of a quiz show, encourages viewers to use their mind to reason. Two Johns Hopkins University engineering freshmen, Karvel Rose and Robert Abernethy, and two arts and sciences freshmen, Michael Kelley and Pudge Ellwood, are the contestants. Walter Millis, Jr. is the scorekeeper, and Dr. Eliezer Naddor, Johns Hopkins professor of industrial engineering, asks the questions and explains the answers to eight puzzles.

Lynn Poole summarizes the modern concept of foundations for philanthropy. Dr. Milton S. Eisenhower, president of Johns Hopkins University, reports that there are 7,000 private foundations in the U. S. with assets of over $7 billion. He discusses their varied interests noting that this program will focus on a representative foundation's private gifts to education. Henry T. Heald, president of the Ford Foundation, explains that the purpose of this foundation's twenty programs is to advance human welfare. Secretary of the Ford Foundation Joseph M. McDaniel points out that foundations can be discriminating, flexible, and can show by example. He describes the Ford Foundation's funding of both the Woodrow Wilson program for attracting able students into the teaching field and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Mr. McDaniel explains that about 400 applications are funded from the 5,000 received annually. These are selected because they seem to provide the best solutions to issues that are within the foundation's purpose and interests. Clarence H. Faust, president of the Fund for the Advancement of Education of the Ford Foundation, describes some of the teacher shortage solutions supported by this fund. For example, this fund contributes to new school construction, and in 1955 it partnered with the Carnegie Foundation to create the National Merit Scholarship Corp. to provide scholarships to send more students to college. Mr. Faust also discusses the "Hagerstown Project" in Washington County, MD where a grant from the Ford Foundation has supplied funds for a five-year experiment using closed circuit television for classroom instruction.

This program details the history and activity of the American whale fishing industry. Edouard Stackpole, curator and marine historian at Mystic Seaport, CT, describes the size and characteristics of sperm whales and right whales and how they were hunted, killed, and processed. He shows examples of products made from whale oil, in lieu of petroleum, and whale bone, later replaced by light metals and plastics. Photos and films taken aboard the wooden whaleship "Charles W. Morgan" show her last whale hunt, in 1921, including a "Nantucket sleigh ride." The "Morgan," which made 37 voyages in 80 years, was built in 1841 and is now restored at Mystic Seaport. Mr. Stackpole notes that the last whaler to set sail out of New Bedford was the "Wanderer" in 1924, but she wrecked fifteen miles out of port.

A biophysicist with the Research Institute for Advanced Studies, established by the Martin Company in Baltimore, MD., Dr. Hans Turnit explains the chemical process of photosynthesis and the life cycle of a plant vs. that of an animal. He also discusses lamella planes and shows a film clip of how materials can be taken from chloroplasts and made into monomolecular films or layers, as researched by Nobel Prize winner Irving Langmuir. Dr. Albert Krall, a plant biochemist at the same institute, discusses respiration of plants and reports the two problems his research is trying to solve: how energy is converted into chemical energy and by which enzymatic steps is energy stored. He notes that in 1828 Friedrich Wohler laid the foundation for organic chemistry, and in 1896 Eduard Buchner opened the era of biochemistry. Now the Calvin Group in California has traced the path of carbon through a plant during photosynthesis showing that sunlight acts on the chlorophyll to make organic compounds. Dr. Krall shows a mock-up model of a chloroplast with grana and a hypothetical model representing the enzymatic reaction during photosynthesis. Dr. Bessel Kok, a plant physiologist with the institute, describes a microscopic view of a plant cell. A time lapse film, by Dr. Jan Zurzicky, of chloroplasts under differing light intensities shows an example of light saturation. Since plants convert one-third of light energy into usable energy, photosynthesis from experimental large-scale algae farms could be a key source of energy and food in the future.

Lynn Poole provides a brief history of the origins and transmission of influenza. Dr. Charlotte Silverman, chief of the Division of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases, Maryland Department of Health, describes the production and activities of antibodies and the 1957 vaccination program, citing Dr. Maurice Hellerman at the Walter Reed Hospital as the person who identified the new type A strain of the Asian flu virus. She also explains the international character of the flu, which can cause epidemics and pandemics, such as the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918-19, during which 25 million died. A film shows the work of the World Influenza Center in London where flu strains are collected and studied. Another film clip illustrates how Asian influenza virus vaccines are made in hens' eggs. Dr. Silverman describes how viewers can protect themselves and lessen spreading the virus. Finally, Dr. Silverman describes symptoms of the flu and offers suggestions for treatment of it.