The BEST episodes directed by Randall Maclowry
#1 - The Rise and Fall of Penn Station
American Experience - Season 26 - Episode 8
In 1910, the Pennsylvania Railroad successfully accomplished the enormous engineering feat of building tunnels under New York City's Hudson and East Rivers, connecting the railroad to New York and New England, knitting together the entire eastern half of the United States. The tunnels terminated in what was one of the greatest architectural achievements of its time, Pennsylvania Station. Penn Station covered nearly eight acres, extended two city blocks, and housed one of the largest public spaces in the world. But just 53 years after the station’s opening, the monumental building that was supposed to last forever, to herald and represent the American Empire, was slated to be destroyed.
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#2 - The Fabric of the Cosmos: The Illusion of Time (2)
NOVA - Season 38 - Episode 16
Ask physicists what time actually is, and the answer might shock you: they have no idea. The deep sense we have of time passing from present to past may be an illusion. How can our understanding of something so familiar be so wrong? In search of answers, Brian Greene takes us on the ultimate time-traveling adventure.
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American Experience - Season 19 - Episode 9
The story of gold in California and the migration, immigration, and economy that remained after the riches were gone.
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American Experience - Season 25 - Episode 6
Led by physicist Robert Noyce, Fairchild Semiconductor began as a start-up company whose radical innovations would help make the United States a leader in both space exploration and the personal computer revolution, changing the way the world works, plays, and communicates. Noyce's invention of the microchip ultimately re-shaped the future, launching the world into the Information Age.
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#5 - The Battle of Chosin
American Experience - Season 29 - Episode 2
Revisit this pivotal 1950 Korean War battle through the eyewitness accounts of participants. A harrowing story of bloody combat and heroic survival in the first major military clash of the Cold War.
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#6 - The Mine Wars
American Experience - Season 28 - Episode 6
Go inside the coal miners' bitter battle for dignity at the dawn of the 20th century with The Mine Wars. The struggle over the material that fueled America led to the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War and turned parts of West Virginia into a bloody war zone.
#7 - Stephen Foster
American Experience - Season 13 - Episode 15
Chronicle of the short life of one of America's first nationally-recognized songwriters.
#8 - The Feud
American Experience - Season 31 - Episode 10
The feud between the Hatfields and McCoys is perhaps the most famous family conflict in American history. As legend has it, two neighboring families in the backwoods of Appalachia waged a crude and bloody war against each other over a stolen hog, an illicit romance, and longstanding grudges. Yet the events that took place near the end of the 19th century between the Hatfields and McCoys are part of a much richer and more complex narrative of the American experience. Anderson Hatfield and Randolph McCoy, the patriarchs of the legendary feud, were entrepreneurs seeking to climb up from hardship after fierce economic competition and rapid technological change had turned their lives upside down. When members of both families took their grievances to court, their dispute escalated into a war between two families and a struggle between two states. The Feud reveals more than an isolated story of mountain lust and violence between “hillbillies” — the Hatfield - McCoy feud was a microcosm of the tensions inherent in the nation’s rapid industrialization after the Civil War.