MARCH/APRIL 2026
Henry David Thoreau _ “When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond….” So begins Henry David Thoreau’s seminal work, Walden. Despite the author’s influence on reformers including John Muir, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., there has never been a full-length documentary exploring the life of Henry David Thoreau until now. PBS has remedied this by presenting a new three-part, three-hour film devoted to one of the country’s greatest writers and among the most enduring thinkers of the 19th-century Transcendentalist movement in America. Viewers will gain a deeper understanding of the intellectual, social, and cultural currents of Thoreau’s time and their lasting impact on American history and thought. Taking advantage of new historical findings, the filmmakers explore concepts at the core of Thoreau’s work including the health of our planet, justice for all human beings, and the importance of standing up for one’s beliefs in the public square. All of these issues have immense sociological significance today. “He challenged Americans to ask hard questions about who we are and what kind of society we want to build, a challenge that remains as urgent today as it was in his day,” says executive producer Ken Burns. “Perhaps most importantly he asked us to stop and to pay attention to the world around us.” Narrated by George Clooney, Henry David Thoreau illuminates the vibrant intellectual and political community of Concord, Massachusetts, in the mid-1800s. Thoreau, voiced by Jeff Goldblum, moved among towering figures of American thought such as his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Frederick Douglass, the radical abolitionists of Boston, and the even-more-controversial John Brown. This documentary illuminates their ideas, set amid the fight against slavery, the rise of women’s rights, the impact of industrialization on New England’s landscape, and the continued displacement of Native peoples. Ultimately, Henry David Thoreau presents a portrait of a man both rooted in his time and speaking far beyond it. “This film honors his legacy while asking what it means to live with purpose in the 21st century,” says executive producer Don Henley, founding member and lead singer of the Eagles, a longtime advocate for environmental causes, and founder and chair of the Walden Woods Project, which preserves Thoreau’s legacy. Premieres Monday, March 30 at 9 p.m. on VPM PBS
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