Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism | PBS - March 31, 2026 -
Watch the full three-part film: https://to.pbs.org/hdt2026After graduating from Harvard Divinity School, Henry David Thoreau is introduced to an electrifying new social movement through the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is the first youth movement in American history, and it boils down to one simple, but powerful idea: that there is a spark of divinity within everyone, including enslaved people. This idea calls the entirety of American society into question.
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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Yet our knowledge of Henry David Thoreau is incomplete, outdated, and often inaccurate.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 3-part documentary, executive produced by Ken Burns and Don Henley, directed by Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers, the mythical Thoreau gives 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.
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).
