On the top floor of a skyscraper in New York, a party is being held to announce the engagement of actress Brenda Burton to Jake MacNaughton, the son and heir of the president of El Grande, the number one underwear manufacturer in the U.S.A. While Jake is about to marry Brenda for publicity objectives for the company.

At 10:20 pm, on a foggy December 25th in 1951, a bomb exploded under their small shotgun-style home on the outskirts of Mims, Florida - directly under their bedroom. It was both Christmas Day, and Harry and Harriette's 25th wedding anniversary.

Upstanding community leader Nils has just won an award for "Citizen of the Year" when he learns the news that his son has died of a heroin overdose. Suspecting foul play, Nils begins to investigate, and soon finds himself at the center of an escalating underworld gang war between Serbian drug dealers and a sociopathic criminal mastermind known only as “The Count.”

In the 19th century, when the southern lands of Italy are bandit territory, Filomena escapes her wealthy but sad life to lead a risky treasure hunt.

In its three hour-long programs, SEARCHING asks deep and timeless questions: Where do we humans fit in the grand scheme of things? Why do we yearn for permanence in an impermanent universe? Are we just atoms and molecules, or something more? How does consciousness arise from the material neurons in our brains? What aspects of our humanity will be preserved as we evolve beyond biology, from Homo Sapiens to Homo Techno, part human and part machine? What are the smallest things in nature, and the largest and farthest? 　　To explore these questions, MIT physicist and best-selling novelist, Alan Lightman (Einstein’s Dreams), engages in lively, revealing and sometimes even humorous dialog with Nobel Prize-winning scientists, philosophers, ethicists and faith leaders. We travel to the prehistoric caves of Font-de-Gaume in France, where drawings and symbols suggest that—as long ago as 40,000 years—our early human ancestors were also searching for meaning. In Florence, Italy, we examine Galileo’s original telescopes. He was the first to show that the heavens are made of the same stuff as Earth, that the universe is impermanent, and that all is made of ordinary material. We walk through the giant atom smasher at CERN on the Swiss-French border, where physicists are trying to find the smallest particles of nature, and visit the laboratory of Nobel laureate Jack Szostak, who is attempting to create a living cell from chemicals present on primitive earth. Lightman converses with an advanced android named Bina48 and talks to ethicist Ruth Faden about what moral obligations we might have to such a being in the future. He speaks with Nobelist Rai Weiss and MIT Dean of Science Nergis Mavalvala (a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellow) about their experiences in building LIGO, the gravitational wave experiment. Lightman quizzes neuroscientist Robert Desimone about the possibility of understanding the brain well enough to predict whether two people will fall in love, asks the Dalai Lama about the nature of consciousness, and speaks with philosopher Rebecca Goldstein (also a MacArthur genius) about meaning and the spectacle of existence. 　　PART 1: THE STARS & THE OSPREY 　　PART 2: THE BIG & THE SMALL 　　PART 3: HOMO TECHNO

France, beginning of World War II. Hélène Studler is a nun who has been dedicated to the care of orphans and the abandoned people. But the times have changed, the people are living a whole revolt, the Germansoldiers have entered their city and the reality that now faces far exceeds the harshness to which they are accustomed: Hélène discovers that near her locality, the Nazis have installed a concentration camp. Along with some people of the city, several of her Sisters Daughters of Charity plot a whole plan to free the captives from their tragic end.

Two intertwined families, one American, one Mexican, and their fight to save three year old illegal Angelina from deportation.

Photographer, author and activist Mary Ann Bruni exposes the brutal epidemic of "honor killings" in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, where more than 12,000 teenage girls accused of damaging their families' reputations have been murdered by relatives. Working with the Women's Media and Education Center, a local humanitarian organization, Bruni interviews men involved in the killings, many of whom demonstrate nothing but contempt for the victims.

In a world teetering on chaos, elite assassin John Rico is the go-to solution when the government wants threats removed-quietly and permanently. But when a mission goes sideways, he's given one last shot at redemption: track down and eliminate Mason Ryker, the final ghost of the feared underground unit known as The Order of the Dragon. As Rico's mission leads him to a small, danger-ridden town in Serbia, the lines between good and evil begin to blur. Is Ryker the monster he's made out to be, or is there a deeper conspiracy at play? What begins as a black-and-white hit spirals into a moral storm-and time is running out.

In a world teetering on chaos, elite assassin John Rico is the go-to solution when the government wants threats removed-quietly and permanently. But when a mission goes sideways, he's given one last shot at redemption: track down and eliminate Mason Ryker, the final ghost of the feared underground unit known as The Order of the Dragon. As Rico's mission leads him to a small, danger-ridden town in Serbia, the lines between good and evil begin to blur. Is Ryker the monster he's made out to be, or is there a deeper conspiracy at play? What begins as a black-and-white hit spirals into a moral storm-and time is running out.