It's all around us--so much a part of our lives that we forget it's there. But try to survive a single day without packaging. This episode reveals the astounding technology and ingenuity required to create our packaged world. At a Michigan company that designs water bottles, we'll show you how engineers find their inspiration from a bell pepper. In New Jersey, the makers of bubble wrap clue you in on their manufacturing secrets. In Texas, workers conquer the challenge of packaging the world's largest crane. And you'll also see how America's military goods and supplies are packaged and shipped by the United States Transportation Command. Other stories include a new easy to open package that's the cure for "wrap rage"--and how NASA engineers packed a fragile humanoid robot for a trip into orbit.

It's the unsung essential of modern life. Canning is the method of preserving and packaging food, without which civilization would never have ventured beyond the local food supply. It changed the way the world eats and revolutionized the food industry. There are self-heating and self-cooling cans, microwaveable cans, ozone-safe aerosol, cans and cans that store nuclear waste. We will explore where canning has been, where it is now,and where it is going in the future.

It's in our blood, sweat, and tears. Join us as we dig up salt mining's history--from the "white gold" on the table to the oceanic and underground deposits from whence it came. Though today we take salt for granted, most life depends on it. Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in it--hence the word salary. And many slaves died procuring it.

In a carnivorous world, a butcher is a necessary link in the food chain, carving a carcass of unsavory flesh into mouthwatering cuts. We trace the grisly trade's evolution--from yesteryear's butcher-on-every-corner to today's industrial butcher working on a "disassembly" line. We tour the infamous remains of the Chicago Stockyards, where Upton Sinclair, Clarence Birdseye, and refrigeration changed butchering forever; witness high-speed butchering; and travel to a non-stop sausage factory. And if you're still squeamish, a USDA inspector offers the lowdown on HACCP--the country's new system of checks and balances on everything from quality grading to E. coli, Salmonella, and Mad Cow Disease. Finally, we visit the last bastion of old-school butchering--the rural custom butcher, who slaughters, eviscerates, skins, and cuts to his customer's wishes.

Cutting, digging, picking, stripping, shaking, and raking--whatever the crop, there's a custom machine to harvest it. It all began with handpicking, and today it's often one man and one machine harvesting hundreds of acres in a single day. The farmer may even get a little help from satellites. Far above the earth, high-resolution photography is giving the grower more opportunities to cut costs and maximize the harvest. From the debut of the sickle in ancient Egypt to McCormick's famous Reaper to the field of ergonomics that assists human harvesters, we'll dig into the past and future of the harvest.

In America's orchards and farm fields, the constant struggle between hand labor and mechanization has produced dozens of efficient and sometimes bizarre harvesting methods. We'll learn the secrets of the orchard manager and his ladder crew as they check fruit pressures and barometric readings. We'll visit California's largest fruit packing house and try to keep up with 10-fruit-per-second conveyors. Then we're off to the corn fields of Nebraska and the cranberry marshes of central Wisconsin. Finally, we'll go underground to the world's largest mushroom farm where the harvest takes place in limestone caverns that run some 150 miles. From fruit tree picking platforms to cranberry beaters and corn pickers, we constantly strive to speed the harvest.

It's one of the world's oldest and most beloved beverages--revered by Pharaohs and brewed by America's Founding Fathers. Today, brewing the bitter elixir is a multi-billion-dollar global industry. Join us for an invigorating look at brewing's history from prehistoric times to today's cutting-edge craft breweries, focusing on its gradually evolving technologies and breakthroughs. We'll find the earliest known traces of brewing, which sprang up independently in such far-flung places as ancient Sumeria, China, and Finland; examine the surprising importance that beer held in the daily and ceremonial life of ancient Egypt; and at Delaware's Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, an adventurous anthropologist and a cutting-edge brewer show us the beer they've concocted based on 2,700-year-old DNA found in drinking vessels from the funerary of the legendary King Midas.

When Paul Bunyan cried "Timber!", he never foresaw today's cutting-edge, controversial industry that feeds a ravenous, lumber-crazy world--a world striving to protect nature while devouring it. Come into the woods to see how he-men and hi-tech combine forces to topple 4-billion trees annually; journey to 19th-century America, when lumberjacks cut a legend as large as the timber they felled; and travel with a tree from stump to sawmill and learn its non-wood uses--from aspirin to film to toothpaste!

It's all around us--so much a part of our lives that we forget it's there. But try to survive a single day without packaging. This episode reveals the astounding technology and ingenuity required to create our packaged world. At a Michigan company that designs water bottles, we'll show you how engineers find their inspiration from a bell pepper. In New Jersey, the makers of bubble wrap clue you in on their manufacturing secrets. In Texas, workers conquer the challenge of packaging the world's largest crane. And you'll also see how America's military goods and supplies are packaged and shipped by the United States Transportation Command. Other stories include a new easy to open package that's the cure for "wrap rage"--and how NASA engineers packed a fragile humanoid robot for a trip into orbit.

It's the unsung essential of modern life. Canning is the method of preserving and packaging food, without which civilization would never have ventured beyond the local food supply. It changed the way the world eats and revolutionized the food industry. There are self-heating and self-cooling cans, microwaveable cans, ozone-safe aerosol, cans and cans that store nuclear waste. We will explore where canning has been, where it is now,and where it is going in the future.

It's in our blood, sweat, and tears. Join us as we dig up salt mining's history--from the "white gold" on the table to the oceanic and underground deposits from whence it came. Though today we take salt for granted, most life depends on it. Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in it--hence the word salary. And many slaves died procuring it.

In a carnivorous world, a butcher is a necessary link in the food chain, carving a carcass of unsavory flesh into mouthwatering cuts. We trace the grisly trade's evolution--from yesteryear's butcher-on-every-corner to today's industrial butcher working on a "disassembly" line. We tour the infamous remains of the Chicago Stockyards, where Upton Sinclair, Clarence Birdseye, and refrigeration changed butchering forever; witness high-speed butchering; and travel to a non-stop sausage factory. And if you're still squeamish, a USDA inspector offers the lowdown on HACCP--the country's new system of checks and balances on everything from quality grading to E. coli, Salmonella, and Mad Cow Disease. Finally, we visit the last bastion of old-school butchering--the rural custom butcher, who slaughters, eviscerates, skins, and cuts to his customer's wishes.

Cutting, digging, picking, stripping, shaking, and raking--whatever the crop, there's a custom machine to harvest it. It all began with handpicking, and today it's often one man and one machine harvesting hundreds of acres in a single day. The farmer may even get a little help from satellites. Far above the earth, high-resolution photography is giving the grower more opportunities to cut costs and maximize the harvest. From the debut of the sickle in ancient Egypt to McCormick's famous Reaper to the field of ergonomics that assists human harvesters, we'll dig into the past and future of the harvest.

In America's orchards and farm fields, the constant struggle between hand labor and mechanization has produced dozens of efficient and sometimes bizarre harvesting methods. We'll learn the secrets of the orchard manager and his ladder crew as they check fruit pressures and barometric readings. We'll visit California's largest fruit packing house and try to keep up with 10-fruit-per-second conveyors. Then we're off to the corn fields of Nebraska and the cranberry marshes of central Wisconsin. Finally, we'll go underground to the world's largest mushroom farm where the harvest takes place in limestone caverns that run some 150 miles. From fruit tree picking platforms to cranberry beaters and corn pickers, we constantly strive to speed the harvest.

It's one of the world's oldest and most beloved beverages--revered by Pharaohs and brewed by America's Founding Fathers. Today, brewing the bitter elixir is a multi-billion-dollar global industry. Join us for an invigorating look at brewing's history from prehistoric times to today's cutting-edge craft breweries, focusing on its gradually evolving technologies and breakthroughs. We'll find the earliest known traces of brewing, which sprang up independently in such far-flung places as ancient Sumeria, China, and Finland; examine the surprising importance that beer held in the daily and ceremonial life of ancient Egypt; and at Delaware's Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, an adventurous anthropologist and a cutting-edge brewer show us the beer they've concocted based on 2,700-year-old DNA found in drinking vessels from the funerary of the legendary King Midas.

When Paul Bunyan cried "Timber!", he never foresaw today's cutting-edge, controversial industry that feeds a ravenous, lumber-crazy world--a world striving to protect nature while devouring it. Come into the woods to see how he-men and hi-tech combine forces to topple 4-billion trees annually; journey to 19th-century America, when lumberjacks cut a legend as large as the timber they felled; and travel with a tree from stump to sawmill and learn its non-wood uses--from aspirin to film to toothpaste!

It's all around us--so much a part of our lives that we forget it's there. But try to survive a single day without packaging. This episode reveals the astounding technology and ingenuity required to create our packaged world. At a Michigan company that designs water bottles, we'll show you how engineers find their inspiration from a bell pepper. In New Jersey, the makers of bubble wrap clue you in on their manufacturing secrets. In Texas, workers conquer the challenge of packaging the world's largest crane. And you'll also see how America's military goods and supplies are packaged and shipped by the United States Transportation Command. Other stories include a new easy to open package that's the cure for "wrap rage"--and how NASA engineers packed a fragile humanoid robot for a trip into orbit.

It's the unsung essential of modern life. Canning is the method of preserving and packaging food, without which civilization would never have ventured beyond the local food supply. It changed the way the world eats and revolutionized the food industry. There are self-heating and self-cooling cans, microwaveable cans, ozone-safe aerosol, cans and cans that store nuclear waste. We will explore where canning has been, where it is now,and where it is going in the future.

It's in our blood, sweat, and tears. Join us as we dig up salt mining's history--from the "white gold" on the table to the oceanic and underground deposits from whence it came. Though today we take salt for granted, most life depends on it. Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in it--hence the word salary. And many slaves died procuring it.

In a carnivorous world, a butcher is a necessary link in the food chain, carving a carcass of unsavory flesh into mouthwatering cuts. We trace the grisly trade's evolution--from yesteryear's butcher-on-every-corner to today's industrial butcher working on a "disassembly" line. We tour the infamous remains of the Chicago Stockyards, where Upton Sinclair, Clarence Birdseye, and refrigeration changed butchering forever; witness high-speed butchering; and travel to a non-stop sausage factory. And if you're still squeamish, a USDA inspector offers the lowdown on HACCP--the country's new system of checks and balances on everything from quality grading to E. coli, Salmonella, and Mad Cow Disease. Finally, we visit the last bastion of old-school butchering--the rural custom butcher, who slaughters, eviscerates, skins, and cuts to his customer's wishes.

Cutting, digging, picking, stripping, shaking, and raking--whatever the crop, there's a custom machine to harvest it. It all began with handpicking, and today it's often one man and one machine harvesting hundreds of acres in a single day. The farmer may even get a little help from satellites. Far above the earth, high-resolution photography is giving the grower more opportunities to cut costs and maximize the harvest. From the debut of the sickle in ancient Egypt to McCormick's famous Reaper to the field of ergonomics that assists human harvesters, we'll dig into the past and future of the harvest.

In America's orchards and farm fields, the constant struggle between hand labor and mechanization has produced dozens of efficient and sometimes bizarre harvesting methods. We'll learn the secrets of the orchard manager and his ladder crew as they check fruit pressures and barometric readings. We'll visit California's largest fruit packing house and try to keep up with 10-fruit-per-second conveyors. Then we're off to the corn fields of Nebraska and the cranberry marshes of central Wisconsin. Finally, we'll go underground to the world's largest mushroom farm where the harvest takes place in limestone caverns that run some 150 miles. From fruit tree picking platforms to cranberry beaters and corn pickers, we constantly strive to speed the harvest.

It's one of the world's oldest and most beloved beverages--revered by Pharaohs and brewed by America's Founding Fathers. Today, brewing the bitter elixir is a multi-billion-dollar global industry. Join us for an invigorating look at brewing's history from prehistoric times to today's cutting-edge craft breweries, focusing on its gradually evolving technologies and breakthroughs. We'll find the earliest known traces of brewing, which sprang up independently in such far-flung places as ancient Sumeria, China, and Finland; examine the surprising importance that beer held in the daily and ceremonial life of ancient Egypt; and at Delaware's Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, an adventurous anthropologist and a cutting-edge brewer show us the beer they've concocted based on 2,700-year-old DNA found in drinking vessels from the funerary of the legendary King Midas.

When Paul Bunyan cried "Timber!", he never foresaw today's cutting-edge, controversial industry that feeds a ravenous, lumber-crazy world--a world striving to protect nature while devouring it. Come into the woods to see how he-men and hi-tech combine forces to topple 4-billion trees annually; journey to 19th-century America, when lumberjacks cut a legend as large as the timber they felled; and travel with a tree from stump to sawmill and learn its non-wood uses--from aspirin to film to toothpaste!