Retro Report on PBS

Sex ed programs in schools are informed by the past; busting a crime myth; AIDS hot spots; the legacy of napster; Andy Borowitz tackles bullying.

Rates of H.I.V. infection have fallen in many places, but the AIDS crisis persists in some parts of the country. What can be learned from history – and specifically the story of Ryan White?

A decades-old battle is re-emerging over how sex is presented in the classroom, as the Trump administration gives support to “sexual risk avoidance” programs that promote abstinence.

Napster, created by an 18-year-old developer, exploded across college campuses across the country in 1999. With a mouse click, music lovers gained free access to their favorite tunes. The record industry took to the courts to shut down the upstart company. But a generation of consumers had tasted instant entertainment on demand, and there was no turning back.

States are reconsidering life prison sentences of people who were given mandatory life terms as juveniles – a practice since ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. At the time, in the 1990s, a handful of researchers inspired panic with a dire but flawed prediction: the imminent arrival of  a new breed of remorseless teen killers, so-called superpredators.

Prominent Americans are eager to declare their opposition to bullying. There’s only one problem, New Yorker magazine humorist Andy Borowitz asserts: we live in an enthusiastically pro-bullying culture. He traces the history of bullying on television and beyond.

The long-running debate over frivolous lawsuits took shape years ago after McDonald’s coffee spilled into a woman’s lap and she was awarded millions in damages. Her complaint sounded frivolous. But the facts told another story.

New Yorker magazine humorist Andy Borowitz examines how Anita Bryant, ubiquitous in the 1960s and 70s for commercials promoting Florida orange juice, inadvertently energized the gay rights movement.

Immigration controversies echo past anti-immigration backlash. Why a lawsuit over scalding coffee is misunderstood. The origin of Special Ops forces.  Risks after Challenger. Andy Borowitz examines Anita Bryant’s unintended influence.

The rise of special operations units today can be traced to a failed attempt to rescue Americans held hostage in Iran in 1980, and the successful Israeli raid at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport.

Immigration policy has exposed the sharp divisions of the Trump era more clearly than any other issue. The controversies echo an anti-immigration movement 25 years ago in California.

Normalization of deviance, the process of becoming inured to risky actions, is a useful concept for today that was developed to explain how the Challenger disaster happened.