Secrets of the Dead is returning this summer with a much-anticipated encore and two brand new episode premieres.
Check out the lineup for the Summer of Secrets on PBS:
Secrets of the Dead: Cleopatra’s Lost Tomb
Encores Tuesday, June 18 at 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings)
Join Kathleen Martinez, criminal lawyer turned maverick archaeologist, as she searches for Cleopatra’s lost tomb. Very little evidence remains of Egypt’s last queen, but a radical new theory has led Kathleen to look where no one else has dared — and her hunch is paying off as she stuns the archaeological establishment with her discoveries of incredible artifacts, a network of mysterious tunnels, and even a vast city of the dead dated to the time of the Queen and her Ptolemaic dynasty. Now Kathleen has made her biggest breakthrough so far: a 35-meter deep underground shaft that, according to the experts, has all the hallmarks of a royal burial shaft. Could Kathleen be closing in on Cleopatra’s final resting place?
Secrets of the Dead: World War Speed
Premieres Tuesday, June 25 at 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings)
Stories about drug use by Hitler and German forces during World War II have been widely told. What’s less well known is the Allied commanders’ embraced pharmacological “force enhancers” as well. By 1941, rumors about Nazi soldiers using a “super-drug” identified as the methamphetamine Pervitin were confirmed, and Allied commanders launched their own classified program to find the perfect war-fighting drug. In Secrets of the Dead: World War Speed, join historian James Holland on his quest to understand how the use of amphetamines affected the course of World War II and unleashed “the world’s first pharmacological arms race.”
Secrets of the Dead: Galileo’s Moon
Premieres Tuesday, July 2 at 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings)
When it was published in 1610, Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger) set in motion a scientific revolution. Using observations he made of both the earth’s moon and Jupiter’s moons, Galileo proved earth is not the center of the universe. Five hundred and fifty copies of the original treatise were originally printed and roughly 150 are known to exist today. When an original copy with Galileo’s signature and seemingly original watercolor paintings of the phases of the moon believed to be done by Galileo himself came on the market in 2005, Sidereus Nuncius caused a worldwide sensation 400 years after its creation… and again in 2012 when it was proved a fake.