On the morning of August 7, 1974, French highwire artist Philippe Petit stepped onto a steel cable strung between the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, 1,350 feet above Manhattan, with no safety net. For 45 minutes he walked, danced, lay down, and knelt on the wire across eight passes. This episode tells the story of how a six-year obsession became one of the most audacious feats in history.

We frame the walk as a heist, tracing Petit’s rejection of traditional circus tricks, his earlier illegal walks at Notre-Dame and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the meticulous infiltration of the towers using forged IDs and a fake electric-fence cover story. We follow the harrowing night of rigging, including shooting a fishing line across the gap with a bow and arrow, and the cultural shift that turned the unloved towers into beloved icons.

• The physics of the 55-pound, 26-foot balancing pole and the cavaletti guy-lines
• How the crew nearly lost the 450-pound cable into the void
• Why charges were dropped in exchange for a free aerial show for children in Central Park
• How Petit gave the criticized towers a human scale and a soul
• His later life of analog precision, from a hand-built barn to balancing an Oscar on his chin