Life in a Glimpse

American Masters is a PBS television series which produces biographies on enduring writers, musicians, visual and performing artists, dramatists, filmmakers, and others who have left an indelible impression on the cultural landscape of the United States.

Biography is a documentary television series. It was originally a half-hour filmed series produced for CBS by David Wolper from 1961 to 1964 and hosted by Mike Wallace. The A&E Network later re-ran it and has produced new episodes since 1987. The older version featured historical figures such as Helen Keller and Mark Twain, or long-dead entertainment figures such as Will Rogers or John Barrymore. The A&E series has placed the emphasis on such people as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Plácido Domingo, Freddie Mercury, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Eric Clapton, Pope John Paul II, Gene Tierney, Selena, Diego Rivera, Mao Zedong and Queen Elizabeth II, and fictional characters like The Phantom, Superman, Hamlet, Betty Boop, and Santa Claus. The program ended up profiling enough figures that in 1999, A&E spun it off into an entire network, The Biography Channel.

Explore the surprising things we know (and don’t know) about why people are the way they are through expert interviews, rare footage from historical experiments, and brand-new, ground-breaking demonstrations of human nature at work.

Don Wildman unearths relics from the world's greatest institutions to reveal secrets from the past. He examines each artifact to illuminate history's most incredible triumphs, sensational crimes and bizarre encounters.

A look at the life of Australian pop star Kylie Minogue, who opens her personal archives and reflects on a career in which she has sold 80 million records and reinvented herself, and by extension pop, several times. Home movies, personal photographs and new interviews reveal the picture, as Kylie addresses how she’s faced public scrutiny, personal loss and illness.

Infographics and archival footage deliver bite-size history lessons on scientific breakthroughs, social movements and world-changing discoveries.