Step behind the headlines as Making Stuff... dramatizes the human stories woven into the current wave of hi-tech breakthroughs. Hosted by the New York Times' lively technology correspondent David Pogue, each hour in this four-part series explores the talent, luck, and determination that can turn a wild idea into a cutting-edge material or high-tech breakthrough.

Episodes include:

Making Stuff: Stronger - What is the strongest material in the world? Is it iron? Are Kevlar and carbon nanotubes the way of the future, or will the powerful properties discovered in natural spider silk one day replace steel?

Making Stuff: Smaller - How small can we go? Could we one day have robots taking "fantastic voyages" in our bodies to kill rogue cells? The triumphs of tiny are seen all around us in the Information Age: transistors, microchips, laptops, cell phones.

Making Stuff: Smarter - What can nature teach us in building smarter materials? Can we create materials that sense and respond? "When describing 'smart materials,' one analogy scientists give is the evolution from the first Terminator robot, a machine made of metal and circuitry, to the shape-shifting 'liquid guy' in Terminator 2," said Making Stuff producer Chris Schmidt

Making Stuff: Cleaner - Most modern materials are dangerous to the environment, but what about cleaning up our world? Batteries grown from viruses, tires made from orange peel oil, plastics made of sugar, and solar cells that cook up hydrogen.  These are just a few glimpses of a new generation of clean materials that could power devices of the future.

Educator's Edition Special Features include:

- A comprehensive educator's activity guide (PDF)
- Instructions for demonstrating concepts illustrated in the film (PDF)
- Suggestions for making materials science more accessible in a less formal setting (PDF)
- "What's This Stuff?" activity sheet (PDF)

240+ minutes on 2 Discs