The 1995-96 season of this science series includes stories on the mystery of whether Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last czar of Russia, was murdered along with the rest of her family in 1918; the surface of Venus; the volcanic birth of Hawaii; giant asteroids that could collide with Earth; lightning; arson investigators searching for a serial arsonist; beauty of Australia's Great Barrier Reef; a new form of carbon that has exactly the same geometry as a soccer ball; the increased illnesses of workers in new office buildings.

Other episodes of the "Nova" for the 1995-96 season include stories on: Cambodia's deadly legacy of mine fields; the science of earthquake prediction and preparedness; the recovery of a B-29 plane that made an emergency landing in Greenland in 1947; the Ebola outbreak and the battle to contain it; the war technology employed in Desert Storm; alien abductions; the 1993 record floods that struck the Mississippi River valley; Dr. Benjamin Spock's childhood and own parenting style; the Amazon's Yanomami, the largest group of traditional hunter-gatherers found anywhere in the world.