The Making of 6 Billion Others takes us behind the scenes of a most intriguing series. The idea of for this series came from Yann Arthus-Bertrand, an award-winning filmmaker who was filming Earth from Above in Mali. One day when the helicopter that he was filming from was out of commission, he tried to draw a portrait of contemporary humankind by asking questions about universal values. What is happiness, love, fear, success, family? What lessons...

Can the current generation of hereditary enemies muster the will to put the past behind them? Can nations reconcile old enmities once and for all? This program explores the complexities of promoting forgiveness on a mass scale in places such as Ireland and the Middle East. Dr. Robert Enright, president of The International Forgiveness Institute; Nobel Laureate Betty Williams; representatives of The Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies;...

The fourth documentary in the collection focuses on the omnipresence of spirituality in the Greater Mekong. The values of prosperity, as they are enhanced by the Western World, are in complete opposition with the values of renouncement of material wealth commended by Buddhist philosophy. As a matter of fact, over 90 % of the population of the Greater Mekong is Buddhist. The region is full of temples and pagodas because the spirits, the gods and the...

Allen Hall is one of only three remaining Roman Catholic seminaries in Britain. In this intimate portrait, we follow Allen Hall's seminarians as they pursue a timetable that swings from the esoteric to the practical - from biblical Greek to lessons on how to live a celibate life - learning that the seminary is no "priest school." Beyond learning the tricks of the priestly trade, the seminarians are preparing to be fundamentally altered as human beings....

Painfully familiar with the clash of personal and religious expression, Salman Rushdie can now be seen as a literary sentinel regarding the rise of Islamic extremism. In this program, Bill Moyers talks with the author of Shame, The Satanic Verses, and Shalimar the Clown about the impact of 9/11, about tension between moderate and radical Islam, and about the need to hold the line on fundamentalism even when it leads to personal risk. A reading by...

The new $500 million Museum of the Bible is filled with thousands of texts and artifacts, immersive exhibitions of bible stories, even an amusement park-like area for children. According to those behind the new private institution, the focus is not on proselytizing or presenting religious doctrine, but to raise public awareness of the centrality of the Bible in history and culture. Jeffrey Brown takes a look.

Cultural values often encourage young people to aspire to high-paying, high-profile jobs-ones that ensure expensive houses, cars, clothes, and everything money can buy. Recently, however, a movement toward spiritual fulfillment has become evident among youth through their growing attraction to both traditional religions and nontraditional New Age sects, and even through such unlikely avenues as contemporary music. This program explores this movement...

In the face of catastrophe, spiritual people look to God for relief from their suffering. But how do atheists cope? If there is no grand cosmic plan to explain tragedy or alleviate the tedium of daily responsibilities, why bother to get up in the morning? In this program, biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins explains how science can provide meaning in a universe devoid of God.

This program examines the surprisingly rapid growth of Islam in the heart of America's Bible Belt, a predominantly fundamentalist Christian locale. Yet for Muslims living in Appalachia, the daily challenge lies not so much in acceptance by their neighbors as with practicing their religion in a country whose overall culture is so often at odds with their own beliefs. Interviews with refugees living in the region and with experts in American Islam reveal...

How much do Americans really know about religion? A Pew survey has some surprising answers. NewsHour correspondent Judy Woodruff has details.