American Experience

S36 E07The Cancer Detectives

The Cancer Detectives tells the untold story of the first-ever war on cancer and the coalition of people who fought...

S36 E05 The Riot Report

When Black neighborhoods across America erupted in violence in the summer of 1967, President Johnson appointed a commission to find...

S36 E04 Poisoned Ground: The Tragedy at Love Canal

In the late 1970s, residents of Love Canal in Niagara Falls, NY, discovered that their homes, schools, and playgrounds were...

S35 E10 The War on Disco

Explore the culture war that erupted over the spectacular rise of disco music.

S35 E09 The War on Disco

Explore the culture war that erupted over the spectacular rise of disco music.

S35 E08 The Harvest: Integrating Mississippi's Schools

A look at attempts to desegregate schools in Leland, Mississippi.

S34 E10 The Man Who Tried to Feed the World originally aired...

S34 E09 Test Tube Babies originally aired in 2006

S34 E08 The Polio Crusade originally aired in 2009

S33 E101 Goin' Back to T-Town

Revisit a thriving Black community in Tulsa, which rebuilt after a 1921 racially-motivated massacre.

S33 E12 A Real President/The Survivor

A Real President: Shattered by the Republican victory, Clinton begins to sideline his most trusted advisors in favor of an...

S33 E11 The Comeback Kid/Blood Sport

The Comeback Kid: From the political backwaters of Arkansas, Bill Clinton emerges as a political force unlike any seen on...

S32 E10 The Vote, Part 2

Second of 2 2-hour episodes. Final few years of the struggle for woman suffrage, focusing substantially on the efforts of...

S32 E09 The Vote, Part 1

100 years after the 19th Amendment passed, The Vote tells the dramatic story of the hard-fought and transformative campaign waged...

S32 E08 Mr. Tornado

Japanese American researcher Tetsuya Theodore Fujita, aka Mr. Tornado, created the Fujita scale of tornado intensity and damage and is...

S31 E09 Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, the 1969 three-day music and art fair at a farm in New York that...

S31 E08 Chasing the Moon: Magnificent Desolation

The years 1969-1970 take Americans to the moon and back; what happens to scientific and engineering programs after goals are...

S31 E07 Chasing the Moon: Earthrise

On 27 January 1967, the disastrous failure of Apollo 1 risked the cancellation of America's space program altogether. Within two...

S30 E11 The Eugenics Crusade

The Eugenics Crusade tells the story of the unlikely –– and largely unknown –– campaign to breed a “better” American...

S30 E10 The Circus (2)

When an assassin took his brother's life, Robert Kennedy was bereft of someone he loved, and of a role that...

S30 E09 The Circus (1)

The Eugenics Crusade tells the story of the unlikely –– and largely unknown –– campaign to breed a “better” American...

S29 E12 Summer of Love

In January 1967, San Francisco youth descended on Golden Gate Park for a Human Be-In. The media flocked to the...

S29 E11 Summer of Love

In January 1967, San Francisco youth descended on Golden Gate Park for a Human Be-In. The media flocked to the...

S29 E10 The Great War: Part 3

Discover how the violent and bloody conflict transformed the nation forever, as America steps onto the world stage for the...

S28 E10 The Boys of '36

The story of how a team of underdog American rowers became gold medalists in the 1936 Olympics.

S28 E09 Space Men

U.S. Air Force pilots and scientists lay the groundwork for the U.S. space program through project "Man High".

S28 E08 The Perfect Crime

The trial of wealthy college students Leopold and Loeb, who murder a 14-year-old boy in 1924, sets off a national...

S27 E11 The Pilgrims

Explore the converging forces, circumstances, personalities and events that propelled a group of English men and women west across the...

S27 E10 American Comandante

When William Morgan was executed outside a Havana prison on March 11, 1961, his strange story seemed to vanish from...

S27 E09 Walt Disney (2)

In 1966, the year Walt Disney died, 240 million people saw a Disney movie, 100 million tuned in to a...

S26 E12 The Pilgrims

The challenges the Pilgrims faced in making new lives for themselves still resonate almost 400 years later: the tensions of...

S26 E11 Freedom Summer

This documentary recalls the confrontational, violent summer of 1964 in Mississippi, when student volunteers from around the country joined with...

S26 E10 The Rise and Fall of Penn Station

The enormous engineering feat and one of the greatest architectural achievements of its time, Pennsylvania Station was torn down after...

S25 E10 American Experience: JFK - Part Four

The final installment follows Kennedy through his assassination and the unfulfilled promise of his presidency. Kennedy faces Khrushchev again in...

S25 E09 American Experience: JFK - Part Three

This episode follows Kennedy into the White House, offering fresh assessments of the successes and failures of his tenure. In...

S25 E08 American Experience: JFK - Part Two

JFK's campaign for president is the first to be waged on television, a distinct advantage for the telegenic candidate. Despite...

S24 E13 Silicon Valley

Led by physicist Robert Noyce, Fairchild Semiconductor began as a start-up company whose radical innovations would help make the United...

S24 E12 Henry Ford

An absorbing life story of a farm boy who rose from obscurity to become the most influential American innovator of...

S24 E11 Part Three: 1854 - Emancipation and Victory

The battle between pro-slavery and free-soil contingents rises to fever pitch.

S23 E102 U.S. Grant: Warrior

A profile of Ulysses S. Grant, chronicling how he rose from obscurity to become a Civil War hero who earned...

S23 E101 Jimmy Carter

A profile of former president Jimmy Carter. In 1980, after one term, he lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan,...

S23 E13 Freedom Riders

From PBS and American Experience - This inspirational documentary is about a band of courageous civil-rights activists calling themselves the...

S22 E08 Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World

The American Experience looks at the history of American whaling from its off-shore origins in the 17th century to the...

S22 E07 Roads to Memphis

This film tells the story of an assassin, James Earl Ray, his target, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the...

S22 E06 My Lai

American Experience investigates the My Lai massacre an atrocity during the Vietnam War that killed more than 300 unarmed civilians.

S21 E11 Surviving the Dust Bowl

The story of the farmers who came to the Southern Plains of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas dreaming of prosperity, and...

S21 E10 The Kennedys

The chronicle, which features home movies, and photos, includes patriarch Joseph Kennedy's business and political dealings, his 1960 presidential election...

S21 E09 We Shall Remain: Part V - Wounded Knee

On the night of February 27, 1973, fifty-four cars, horns blaring, rolled into a small hamlet on the Pine Ridge...

S20 E14 George H.W. Bush: Part II

George H.W. Bush: Part II -- President Bush was a pivotal player during a critical moment in world history. But...

S20 E13 George H.W. Bush: Part I

Follow George H.W. Bush from his childhood into war as a combat pilot in the U.S. Navy. Later, the Bushes...

S20 E12 Roberto Clemente

Roberto Clemente is an in-depth look at an exceptional baseball player and committed humanitarian who challenged racial discrimination to become...

S19 E16 The Mormons (1): History

A story of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - its beginnings in 1830, the migration of its...

S19 E15 Alexander Hamilton

From his humble beginnings as an immigrant, to his infamous death, the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton is explored.

S19 E14 The Mormons: Part II

Somewhat different than part 1, which was a selective treatment of Mormon history, part 2 explores the lives of many...

S18 E13 The Man Behind Hitler

A profile of Joseph Goebbels (1897-45), who helped launch Hitler's rise to power. Kenneth Branagh provides voice-over readings of Goebbels'...

S18 E12 Annie Oakley

This one hour documentary examines the life of the famed Sharp Shooter and Wild West performer, Annie Oakley from her...

S18 E11 The Alaska Pipeline

The history of the Alaska Pipeline, which was built in the 1970s to transport oil across 800 miles of pristine...

S17 E13 The Massie Affair

"The Massie Affair" chronicles a 1931 Honolulu rape case involving a young white Navy wife that became even more serious...

S17 E12 Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst

A documentary on the curious American domestic terrorist group, infamous for the 1974 kidnapping of Patty Hearst.

S17 E11 The Carter Family: Will the Circle Be Unbroken

The life and times of The Carter Family, one of the earliest and most-influential group in American country and roots...

S16 E09 Golden Gate Bridge

Recalling the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, a "graceful leap over an unprecedented space," as narrator David Ogden Stiers...

S16 E08 Patriots Day

"Patriots Day" follows Revolutionary War re-enactors as they prepare to re-fire those shots heard 'round the world on April 19,...

S16 E07 Emma Goldman: An Exceedingly Dangerous Woman

Russian immigrant Emma Goldman verbally attacked the U.S. government, big business and World War I before becoming expatriated in 1919.

S15 E13 Murder at Harvard

Recalling the 1955 murder of a 14-year-old black youth in the Mississippi delta, an incident that could very well have...

S15 E12 Bataan Rescue

Historian Simon Schama ("A History of Britain") plays sleuth -- searching, he says, "not for literal truth, but for poetic...

S15 E11 Seabiscuit

He was boxy, with stumpy legs that wouldn't completely straighten a short straggly tail and an ungainly gait; though he...

S14 E101 Lady Bird

Lady Bird Johnson spent 39 years serving, honoring, and protecting one of the biggest galoots Texas has ever produced. Now...

S14 E14 Ulysses S. Grant: Part 2

Mathematics genius John Nash recalls his bout with schizophrenia (the subject dramatized in the Oscar-winning film "A Beautiful Mind"). Nash...

S14 E13 Ulysses S. Grant (Part 1)

Few American artists have reached a wider audience, or enjoyed more widespread popularity in their own lifetime, than Ansel Adams....

S13 E18 Abraham And Mary Lincoln: A House Divided (2): We Are...

Sheds light on the Lincoln marriage during Abraham's time in Congress and his run for president.

S13 E17 Abraham And Mary Lincoln: A House Divided (4): The Dearest...

Mary struggles with personal grief, as Abraham Lincoln becomes consumed with the nation's tragedy.

S13 E16 Streamliners: America's Lost Trains

Recalling the stainless steel trains that crisscrossed the country in high style (and at speeds of greater than 100 mph)...

S12 E15 George Eastman: The Wizard of Photography

Profiling George Eastman (1854-1932), whose Kodak and Brownie cameras "forever changed the way people see their world," says narrator Judith...

S12 E14 Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life

An atmospheric profile of Joe DiMaggio (1914-99), baseball's "Yankee Clipper," explores how and why he played what narrator (and co-writer)...

S12 E13 Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and Glory

A group of former slaves tries to save its bankrupt school, Fisk University, by performing concerts as the Jubilee Singers....

S11 E14 MacArthur (2): The Politics of War

The conclusion of "MacArthur" focuses on his "return" to the Philippines in 1944, his years as Supreme Allied Commander in...

S11 E13 MacArthur (1): Destiny

Part 1 of a two-part biography of Douglas MacArthur takes "America's first soldier" from his brilliant WWI service into WWII,...

S11 E12 Fly Girls

During WWII, more than a thousand women signed up to fly with the U.S. military. Wives, mothers, actresses and debutantes...

S10 E20 Riding the Rails

During the Depression-era 1930's, tens of thousands of teenagers hopped freight trains in search of a better life elsewhere. What...

S10 E19 Surviving the Dust Bowl

Children of 1930s Plains farmers recall the Dust Bowl, the eight-year drought that was made far worse by the 30...

S10 E18 Reagan (2): An American Crusade

The conclusion of a biography of Ronald Reagan focuses on the president's second term and includes his defense-spending policies and...

S09 E15 Vietnam: Parts IX & X - Peace Is at Hand/Homefront...

S09 E14 Vietnam: Parts VII & VIII - Vietnamizing the War/Cambodia and...

S09 E13 Vietnam: Parts V & VI - America's Enemy/Tet 1968

S08 E09 Spy in the Sky

The story of America's high-altitude U-2 spy plane.

S08 E08 The Wright Stuff

Theirs is a quintessential American story of two midwestern boys who believed they could break the barrier of the air,...

S08 E07 The Battle Over Citizen Kane

Documentary about the battle between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst over Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Features interviews with Welles'...

S07 E16 The Way West (4): Ghost Dance (1877-1893)

A six-hour documentary of how the West was lost and won, from the time of the Gold Rush in 1848...

S07 E15 The Way West (3): The War for the Black Hills...

A six-hour documentary of how the West was lost and won, from the time of the Gold Rush in 1848...

S07 E14 The Way West (2): The Approach of Civilization (1865-1869)

A six-hour documentary of how the West was lost and won, from the time of the Gold Rush in 1848...

S06 E09 D-Day Remembered

An award-winning documentary of the invasion of Normandy in World War II, using rare archival films and pictures from British,...

S06 E08 America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference

As the campaign to force Jews out of Germany ramps up, the American government blocks efforts to help rescue many...

S06 E07 Malcolm X: Make It Plain

An award-winning documentary of the invasion of Normandy in World War II, using rare archival films and pictures from British,...

S05 E15 Goin' Back to T-Town

Goin’ Back to T-Town tells the story of Greenwood, an extraordinary Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that prospered during the...

S05 E14 French Dance Tonight

The distinctive music of Louisiana including Cajun and Zydeco performances.

S05 E13 Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

She had been a biologist for the federal government when she first took note of the effects of the unregulated...

S04 E13 In the White Man's Image

In 1875, Captain Richard Pratt ordered 72 Indian warriors suspected who had fought white colonists to Fort Marion in St....

S04 E12 Barnum's Big Top

Story of P.T. Barnum and his role in developing the American Circus into a large business and a cultural force.

S04 E11 Wild by Law

For years there was no federal law to protect the shrinking wilderness from encroaching industry and tourism, until three men...

S03 E20 G-Men: The Rise of J. Edgar Hoover

The evolution of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an instrument to battle serious interstate crime and the personal mission...

S03 E14 Coney Island

The film explores the beginnings of America's first amusement park and takes us through its good times all the way...

S03 E13 Los Mineros

The distinctive music of Louisiana including Cajun and Zydeco performances.

S02 E15 Roots of Resistance: The Story of the Underground Railroad

A chronicle of the organized efforts to help slaves find freedom in the north.

S02 E14 Battle for Wilderness

The story of Yosemite told through the diary of one of the first white Americans to visit the California valley.

S02 E13 Forbidden City, USA

The Americanization of Chinese people in the 1920s and 30s, including public roles that ran counter to their cultural history.

S01 E17 Reagan (Part 4)

Solidarity thrived in Poland; Soviets faced military pressure in Afghanistan, but Congress cut funding for Nicaragua. In 1986 Reagan met...

S01 E16 Sins of Our Mothers: The Story of Emeline

The story of Emeline Bachelder, an early 19th-century New Englander who married a younger man - only to discover that...

S01 E15 The World That Moses Built

Documentary about architect Robert Moses who is responsible for public works projects like the Lincoln Center and the United Nations...