James Tovell

Over 100 years ago, Albert Einstein grappled with the implications of his revolutionary special theory of relativity and came to a startling conclusion: mass and energy are one, related by the formula E = mc2. In "Einstein's Big Idea," NOVA dramatizes the remarkable story behind this equation. E = mc2 was just one of several extraordinary breakthroughs that Einstein made in 1905, including the completion of his special theory of relativity, his identification of proof that atoms exist, and his explanation of the nature of light, which would win him the Nobel Prize in Physics. Among Einstein's ideas, E = mc2 is by far the most famous. Yet how many people know what it really means? In a thought-provoking and engrossing docudrama, NOVA illuminates this deceptively simple formula by unraveling the story of how it came to be.

London, one year from today... The dogs of England are dying, of "Mad Dog Disease," and Rabbie Burns, young drifter and certified schizophrenic, is hearing voices again - on Underground trains, over supermarket tannoys, and on his own T.V. He has 30 hours, a last weekend, to save the world from itself, before the "Supreme Being" himself loses patience and starts over, with a new species...

In eleventh century Scotland, three witches foretell that Macbeth will become King, while Banquo will beget Kings. Macbeth accordingly has King Duncan slain, and is duly crowned in his place. But that's where his problems really begin...