The BEST episodes of American Experience season 25
Every episode of American Experience season 25, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of American Experience season 25!
Presents an absorbing look at the personalities, events and resources that have had a profound impact on the shaping of America's past and present.
#1 - The Abolitionists: 1838-1854
Season 25 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/15/2013
See how the activities of the five principals intersect and affect the anti-slavery movement.
#2 - War of the Worlds
Season 25 - Episode 6 - 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.
#3 - JFK: Part 2
Season 25 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/12/2013
This episode follows Kennedy into the White House, offering fresh assessments of the successes and failures of his tenure. In 1961, the most challenging issue facing the new administration is the spread of communism and continuing Cold War fears. Only a few months into his first term, Kennedy launches the Bay of Pigs invasion, an unmitigated disaster that teaches him a powerful lesson. Nikita Khrushchev proves a stubborn foe, and Kennedy takes a stand against the spread of communism in a country few Americans had ever heard of--Vietnam. On the domestic front, civil rights prove tricky for the administration, as they rely heavily on the support of Southern Democrats. Forced to intervene when Freedom Riders take direct action in Southern states, the administration sends in federal marshals to ensure their safety.
#4 - JFK: Part 1
Season 25 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/11/2013
JFK's campaign for president is the first to be waged on television, a distinct advantage for the telegenic candidate. Despite his lack of legislative achievements and his Catholicism -- which many Americans see as a negative -- Kennedy wins the election on the promise that he will stand up to the Soviets and protect American preeminence in the world.
#5 - Henry Ford
Season 25 - Episode 4 - Aired 1/29/2013
An absorbing life story of a farm boy who rose from obscurity to become the most influential American innovator of the 20th century, Henry Ford offers an incisive look at the birth of the American auto industry with its long history of struggles between labor and management, and a thought-provoking reminder of how Ford's automobile forever changed the way we work, where we live, and our ideas about individuality, freedom, and possibility.
#6 - The Abolitionists: 1854-Emancipation and Victory
Season 25 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/22/2013
Examine the forces leading to war and to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.
#7 - Silicon Valley
Season 25 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/5/2013
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.
#8 - The Abolitionists: 1820s-1838
Season 25 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/8/2013
Abolitionist allies Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown and Angelina Grimké turned a despised fringe movement against chattel slavery into a force that literally changed the nation.
#9 - JFK: Part 3
Season 25 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/12/2013
JFK’s campaign for president is the first to be waged on television, a distinct advantage for the telegenic candidate. Despite his lack of legislative achievements and his Catholicism — which many Americans see as a negative — Kennedy wins the election on the promise that he will stand up to the Soviets and protect American preeminence in the world.
#10 - JFK: Part 4
Season 25 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/12/2013
Kennedy faces Khrushchev again in the Cuban Missile Crisis, ignited when Soviet warheads are spotted in Cuba. Negotiating his way out of the crisis proves to be one of Kennedy’s finest hours, and he spends the rest of his term working for nuclear disarmament. Domestically, the issue of civil rights continues and when Governor George Wallace of Alabama refuses to allow African-American students in the state university, Kennedy brings the issue to the nation, calling for the passage of a civil rights act. Looking ahead to the next election, Kennedy knows he must win Texas to have a second term. So he takes a fateful trip to Dallas, with Jackie accompanying him on her first domestic trip. It is there that an assassin’s bullet ends his life, forever enshrining him in myth.