An Introduction to the Words and Life of Henry David Thoreau | PBS - March 30, 2026 -
Watch the full three-part film: https://to.pbs.org/hdt2026Henry David Thoreau was a lecturer, philosopher, pencil-maker, surveyor; a teacher, scientist, and an abolitionist. But, above all, he was a prolific writer who spent was obsessed with answering deep questions like how to live a good life and what it means to be a human being on this planet.
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Henry David Thoreau | A Film by Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers
He has been called the patron saint of the environmental movement and the father of nonviolent resistance. His best-known work, Walden, is considered a masterpiece and figures on every list of essential American books. His essay “Civil Disobedience” has inspired activists and reformers from Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., to Colin Kaepernick and Greta Thunberg. He was a writer, a scientist, a seeker of truth, and a fighter for maintaining our nation’s first principles.
Yet our knowledge of Henry David Thoreau is incomplete, outdated, and often inaccurate.
In this modern historical documentary, the mythical Thoreau – the secluded hermit in the woods at Walden Pond, the outlier, the prophet – will give way to the human Thoreau: social; genial; inquisitive; an exacting scientist and charismatic speaker; an individual with flaws, self-contradictions, and misjudgments that prove his humanity and hold a mirror to our own.
Henry David Thoreau is the first nationally broadcast biography of this American original at a time when his wisdom is sorely needed. The film explores his most far-reaching and forward-thinking ideas: justice for all human beings, the health of our planet and the species it sustains, the quest for a meaningful life, the importance of standing up for one’s beliefs in the public square. Tracing those concepts into the 21st century will demonstrate how ideas – when taken off the page and truly lived – can change the world.
The series explores his thoughts on people marginalized by society—Native peoples, African Americans, and women. His experiences with them, and how he wrote about them, reveal the complexities of race, gender, and the roots of inequality, offering a clearer view of our shared history. Combined with his reflections on the natural world, or “wildness,” his work shows how nature and the fight for justice are deeply connected.
Executive produced by Ken Burns and Don Henley, directed by Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers, produced by Julie Coffman, Susan Shumaker, and co-producer Cauley Powell, and written by David Blistein.
The film draws on a rich collection of archival materials, newly filmed cinematography in Concord and beyond, and interviews with scholars, writers, and environmentalists. Among the people featured in the film are Pico Iyer, Douglas Brinkley, Lois Brown, Kristen Case, Laura Dassow Walls, Clay Jenkinson, Robin Kimmerer, J. Drew Lanham, Bill McKibben, Michael Pollan, Rebecca Solnit, and more.
The series is narrated by George Clooney and voices are provided by Ted Danson (Ralph Waldo Emerson), Tate Donovan (William Ellery Channing), Jeff Goldblum (Henry David Thoreau), and Meryl Streep (Lidian Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Mary Merrick Brooks, and Maria Thoreau).
