The BEST episodes of American Experience

#1 - The Battle Over Citizen Kane

Season 8 - Episode 7 - Aired 1/29/1996

Orson Welles' movie stirs the ire of publisher William Randolph Hearst, the man who the film was patterned after.

#2 - Secrets of a Master Builder

Season 13 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/30/2000

The contributions of James B. Eads in understanding and altering the great Mississippi River during the second half of the 19th century.

#3 - Partners of the Heart

Season 15 - Episode 8 - Aired 2/10/2003

A tale of the partnership between a white doctor and a young African-American in pioneering cardiac surgical procedures during the World War II era.

#4 - FDR (3): The Grandest Job in the World (1933-1940)

Season 7 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/12/1994

In episode three, the subject is FDR's leadership of America during the Great Depression. The nation turned to this son of great wealth for a host of social programs that promised a New Deal for the common man.

#5 - We Shall Remain (4): Geronimo

Season 21 - Episode 8 - Aired 5/4/2009

A portrait of the Chiracahua Apache who was one of the last Native Americans to continue armed resistance in North America.

#6 - We Shall Remain (5): Wounded Knee

Season 21 - Episode 9 - Aired 5/11/2009

Rebellious Lakota and allies take up arms in 1973 and force an examination of the failures of the reservation system in the United States.

#7 - The Rise and Fall of Penn Station

Season 26 - Episode 8 - Aired 2/18/2014

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.

#8 - Freedom Summer

Season 26 - Episode 9 - Aired 6/24/2014

In the summer of 1964, more than 700 students join with organizers and local blacks to canvas for voter registration, create Freedom Schools and establish the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

#9 - The Boys of '36

Season 28 - Episode 10 - Aired 8/2/2016

A group of working-class boys from the University of Washington, in the United States, surprise a nation when they capture the gold medal in rowing at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin.

#10 - God Bless America and Poland, Too

Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/22/1990

Episode focusing on Polish immigration in the 1910s and the contributions of Poles to the United States.

#11 - 1964

Season 26 - Episode 5 - Aired 1/14/2014

Recalling 1964, a pivotal year in U.S. history. While the Beatles captured the imaginations of the nation's youth, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, unveiled his vision of a "Great Society" and squared off against Barry Goldwater in the presidential election. Also covered: the murders of three Freedom Summer volunteers; and the influence of Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique." Based in part on Jon Margolis' "The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964."

#12 - The Amish: Shunned

Season 26 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/4/2014

Filmed over the course of twelve months, The Amish: Shunned follows seven former members of the Amish community as they reflect on their decisions to leave one of the most closed and tightly-knit communities in the United States. Estranged from family, the ex-Amish find themselves struggling to understand and make their way in modern America. Interwoven through the stories are the voices of Amish men and women who remain staunchly loyal to their traditions and faith. They explain the importance of obedience, the strong ties that bind their communities together, and the pain they endure when a loved one falls away.

#13 - The Poisoner's Handbook

Season 26 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/7/2014

The story of New York City's first medical examiner, Charles Norris (1867-1935), and his chief toxicologist, Alexander Gettler (1883-1968), who pioneered the use of forensic science to explain violent and suspicious deaths. Included: remarks from renowned medical examiners Marcella Fierro and Michael Baden; and author Deborah Blum ("The Poisoner's Handbook"). Oliver Platt narrates.

#14 - The Civilian Conservation Corps

Season 22 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/2/2009

FDR establishes a back-to-work program that generates employment and addresses some of the nation's environmental needs during the Great Depression.

#15 - The Donner Party

Season 5 - Episode 3 - Aired 10/28/1992

Tragic tale of families attempting a short-cut passage to California in the 1840s, with narration of their life-and-death struggle taken from their own journals.

#16 - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Season 26 - Episode 7 - Aired 2/11/2014

Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known as Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, form the Wild Bunch gang and pull off the longest string of holdups in history.

#17 - War of the Worlds

Season 26 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/29/2013

Shortly after 8 p.m. on October 30th, 1938, the voice of a panicked radio announcer broke in with a news bulletin reporting strange explosions taking place on the planet Mars, followed minutes later by a report that Martians had landed in the tiny town of Grovers Mill, New Jersey. It turned out to be H.G. Wells' classic 'The War of the Worlds', performed by 23-year-old Orson Welles. Although most listeners understood that the program was a radio drama, the next day's headlines reported that thousands of others plunged into panic, convinced that America was under a deadly Martian attack. 75 years after the original radio broadcast, 'American Experience' examines the elements that came together to create one of the biggest mass hysteria events in U.S. history.

#18 - JFK: Part 1

Season 26 - Episode 2 - Aired 11/11/2013

JFK’s rise to power. With illuminating interviews from family members, including sister Jean Kennedy Smith, historian Robert Dallek, and author Robert Caro, this episode offers new insight into Kennedy’s early years. John Fitzgerald Kennedy is one of nine children born to one of the wealthiest men in America. Unlike his robust siblings, he is haunted by a mysterious illness. Finally diagnosed with Addison’s disease, he will spend his life in and out of hospitals and in constant pain. Jack Kennedy first bursts onto the national stage as a war hero through his courageous rescue of his PT-109 crewmen. When his older brother, Joe Jr., is killed in the line of duty in 1944, the family’s political hopes shift to Jack. Despite the odds, he wins his Grandfather Fitzgerald’s old Massachusetts congressional seat. With his congressional win, Kennedy rises in power and influence, unseating Senator Henry Cabot Lodge in a surprising victory.

#19 - Nixon (3): The Fall

Season 3 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/15/1990

#20 - LBJ (2)

Season 4 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/1/1991

Lyndon Johnson's ascension to the Presidency and the controversial events of his tenure such as the Great Society and the Vietnam War are chronicled here.

#21 - Walt Disney (2)

Season 28 - Episode 2 - Aired 9/15/2015

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE offers an unprecedented look at the life and legacy of one of America’s most enduring and influential storytellers in Walt Disney, a new two-part, four-hour film premiering Monday and Tuesday, September 14-15, 2015, 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET on PBS

#22 - LBJ (1)

Season 4 - Episode 1 - Aired 9/30/1991

LBJ's career started in 1938 when he was elected a congressman, one of the youngest ever. He was elected to the Senate in 1948 under a cloud of suspicion. LBJ won by only 87 votes. In 1954, when the Democrats took over the Senate, LBJ became the youngest majority leader ever at age 46. In 1957, LBJ engineered passage of the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction, but the bill had too many compromises and no teeth. By 1960, LBJ felt he was ready for the presidency, but John Kennedy got there first and then picked LBJ as his vice president.

#23 - Sealab

Season 31 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/12/2019

On a February day in 1969, off the shore of northern California, a US Navy crane carefully lowered 300 tons of metal into the Pacific Ocean. The massive tubular structure was an audacious feat of engineering — a pressurized underwater habitat, complete with science labs and living quarters for an elite group of divers who hoped to spend days or even months at a stretch living and working on the ocean floor. The Sealab project, as it was known, was the brainchild of a country doctor turned naval pioneer who dreamed of pushing the limits of ocean exploration the same way NASA was pushing the limits of space exploration. As Americans were becoming entranced with the effort to land a man on the moon, these divers, including one of NASA’s most famous astronauts, were breaking depth barrier records underwater. Sealab tells the little-known story of the daring program that tested the limits of human endurance and revolutionized the way humans explore the ocean.

#24 - New York (5): Cosmopolis (1919-1931)

Season 12 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/18/1999

In this short but dazzling period, New York became the focal point of an extraordinary array of human and cultural energies, reaching its highest levels of urban excitement and glamour. In just over a decade, New York gave birth to its signature skyscrapers, the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings, and to artistic creations like F. Scott Fitzgerald's THE GREAT GATSBY, George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," and to the jazz compositions of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. Along the way, Harlem emerged as the undisputed capital of the African- American experience and the new media industries of advertising, radio networks, public relations, and magazines found their homes in midtown Manhattan.

#25 - Dolley Madison

Season 22 - Episode 4 - Aired 3/1/2010

Tony Award-winner Eve Best stars as Dolley Madison, America’s “first First Lady”; Tony Award-winner Jefferson Mays is James Madison.