Episode
NOVA: Mind of a Rampage Killer
Overview
What makes a person walk into a theater or a church or a classroom full of students and open fire? What combination of circumstances compels a human being to commit the most inhuman of crimes? Can science in any way help us understand these horrific events and provide any clues as to how to prevent them in the future? As the nation tries to understand the tragic events at Newtown, NOVA correspondent Miles O’Brien separates fact from fiction, investigating new theories that the most destructive rampage killers are driven most of all, not by the urge to kill, but the wish to die. Could suicide–and the desire to go out in a media-fueled blaze of glory–be the main motivation? How much can science tell us about the violent brain? Most importantly, can we recognize dangerous minds in time—and stop the next Newtown?
Details
- Series
- NOVA
- Season
- Season 40
- Episode
- Episode 12
- Air date
- 2013-02-20
- Runtime
- 55 min
Episode context
Mind of a Rampage Killer is Episode 12 in Season 40 of NOVA. It aired on 2013-02-20. The runtime is 55 min.
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Episode 11: Earth From Space
"Earth From Space" is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. Produced in extensive consultation with NASA scientists, NOVA takes data from earth-observing satellites and transforms it into dazzling visual sequences, each one exposing the intricate and surprising web of forces that sustains life on earth. Viewers witness how dust blown from the Sahara fertilizes the Amazon; how a vast submarine "waterfall" off Antarctica helps drive ocean currents around the world; and how the sun's heating up of the southern Atlantic gives birth to a colossally powerful hurricane. From the microscopic world of water molecules vaporizing over the ocean to the magnetic field that is bigger than Earth itself, the show reveals the astonishing beauty and complexity of our dynamic planet.
Episode 13: Meteor Strike
On February 15, 2013, a 7,000-ton asteroid crashed into the Earth's atmosphere over Russia with the power of 30 Hiroshima bombs. Within days, NOVA crews joined impact scientists in Russia as they hunted for clues about the meteor's origin and makeup.
More episodes from this season
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Episode 14: Ancient Computer
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Episode 9: Who Killed Lindbergh's Baby?
In the aftermath of his 1927 solo transatlantic flight, Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh–the Lone Eagle–became the most famous human being on earth. And when he and his lovely wife Anne produced an adorable baby son, Charlie, an eager press quickly dubbed him Little Lindy or sometimes just the Eaglet. But on the evening of March 1, 1932 Lucky Lindy's luck ran out. Bold kidnappers snatched his baby from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey, while everyone in the house was awake. Negotiations with the kidnappers stretched out for weeks. But Little Charlie never came back. His body was discovered not five miles from Hopewell. Now, NOVA is reopening one of the most intriguing, grisly, and confounding crime mysteries of all time as a team of expert investigators employ state-of-the-art forensic and behavioral science techniques in an effort to determine what really happened to Lindbergh's baby and why.
Episode 15: Australia's First 4 Billion Years: Awakening
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Episode 8: Rise of the Drones
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Episode 16: Australia's First 4 Billion Years: Life Explodes
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Episode 7: Decoding Neanderthals
Examining evidence about Neanderthals that sheds light on the hominids, which died off some 30,000 years ago. Included: geneticist Svante Pääbo's 2010 reconstruction of the Neanderthal genome, which posits that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred at some point in the distant past.
Episode 17: Australia's First 4 Billion Years: Monsters
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Episode 6: Doomsday Volcanoes
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