Sunday, November 18 at 8 p.m.

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Survey the causes of the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, when the frenzied wheat boom of the "Great Plow-Up," followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s, nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation. See vivid interviews with 26 survivors of those hard times, combined with dramatic photographs and seldom-seen movie footage, that bring to life stories of incredible human suffering and equally incredible perseverance. The documentary is also a morality tale about our relationship to the land that sustains us — a lesson we ignore at our peril.

During the decade of Great Depression, California’s population grew by more than 20 percent, an increase of 1.3 million people. More than half of the newcomers came from cities, not farms; one in six were professionals or white collar workers. Of the 315,000 who arrived from Oklahoma, Texas, and neighboring states, only 16,000 were from the Dust Bowl itself. But regardless of where they actually came from, regardless of their skills and their education and their individual reasons for seeking a new life in a new place, to most Californians — and to the nation at large — they were all the same. And they all had the same name: Okies.

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