Seasons & episodes
S27 · E5The Forgotten Plague 2015-02-10 · 55 min
By the dawn of the 19th century, the most deadly killer in human history, tuberculosis, had killed one in seven of all the people who had ever lived. Throughout the 1800s, the disease struck America with a vengeance, ravaging communities and touching the lives of almost every family. The battle against the deadly bacteria had a profound and lasting impact on America. It shaped medical and scientific pursuits, social habits, economic development, western expansion, and government policy. Yet both the disease and its impact are poorly understood; in the words of one writer, tuberculosis is our "forgotten plague."
S27 · E6Last Days In Vietnam 2015-04-28 · 114 min
The North Vietnamese Army was nearing Saigon and the South Vietnamese resistance was at a low. Nearly 5,000 Americans still needed to remove from South Vietnam, but their South Vietnamese allies, co-workers and friends would be captured by the North Army if they where left behind. Many of these South Vietnamese people were able to escape with the help of a number of memorable Americans, who, unsanctioned, managed to complete operations that saved many of the South Vietnamese.
S27 · E7Blackout 2015-07-14 · 55 min
First responders, journalists, shop owners, those inside the pressure-packed control center of Con Edison on West End Avenue, and other New Yorkers tell about what happened when the lights went out on July 13, 1977
S27 · E8Walt Disney (1) 2015-09-14 · 55 min
In 1966, the year Walt Disney died, 240 million people saw a Disney movie, 100 million tuned in to a Disney television program, 80 million bought Disney merchandise, and close to seven million visited Disneyland. Few creative figures before or since have held such a long-lasting place in American life and popular culture.
S27 · E9Walt Disney (2) 2015-09-15 · 55 min
In 1966, the year Walt Disney died, 240 million people saw a Disney movie, 100 million tuned in to a Disney television program, 80 million bought Disney merchandise, and close to seven million visited Disneyland. Few creative figures before or since have held such a long-lasting place in American life and popular culture.
S27 · E10American Comandante 2015-11-17 · 55 min
When William Morgan was executed outside a Havana prison on March 11, 1961, his strange story seemed to vanish from the popular imagination as quickly as it had appeared; it was lost in the classified archives of the Cold War and edited out of Cuban history by Fidel Castro’s retelling of the revolution.
S27 · E11The Pilgrims 2015-11-24 · 55 min
The challenges the Pilgrims faced in making new lives for themselves still resonate almost 400 years later: the tensions of faith and freedom in American society, the separation of Church and State, and cultural encounters resulting from immigration. Staring: Roger Rees (1944 - 2015) as William Bradford in his final Television appearance.
S28 · E1Bonnie & Clyde 2016-01-19 · 55 min
Though their exploits were romanticized, the Barrow gang was believed responsible for at least 23 murders, including two policemen, as well as numerous robberies and kidnappings. Discover the true story of the most famous outlaw couple in U.S. history -- Bonnie and Clyde.
S28 · E2The Mine Wars 2016-01-26 · 55 min
The story of small people going up against very big forces for a better nation. In the first two decades of the 20th century, coal miners and coal companies in West Virginia clashed in a series of brutal conflicts over labor conditions and unionization.
S28 · E3Murder of a President 2016-02-02 · 55 min
The story of James Garfield, one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president, and his assassination by a deluded madman named Charles Guiteau. The story follows Garfield's unprecedented rise to power, his shooting only four months into his presidency, and its bizarre and heartbreaking aftermath.
S28 · E4The Perfect Crime 2016-02-09 · 55 min
The shocking story of Richard Leopold and Nathan Loeb, two wealthy college students who murdered a 14-year-old boy in 1924 to prove they were smart enough to get away with it.
S28 · E5Space Men 2016-03-01 · 55 min
In the 1950s and early '60s, a small band of high-altitude pioneers exposed themselves to the extreme forces of the space age long before NASA's acclaimed Mercury 7 would make headlines. Though largely forgotten today, balloonists were the first to venture into the frozen near-vacuum on the edge of our world, exploring the very limits of human physiology and human ingenuity in this lethal realm.
S28 · E6The Boys of '36 2016-08-02 · 55 min
The story of nine working-class young men from the University of Washington who took the rowing world and America by storm when they captured the gold medal at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Their unexpected victory, against not only the Ivy League teams of the East Coast but Adolf Hitler's elite German rowers, gave hope to a nation struggling to emerge from the depths of the Great Depression.
S28 · E7Tesla 2016-10-18 · 55 min
Meet Nikola Tesla, the genius engineer and tireless inventor whose technology revolutionized the electrical age of the 20th century. Although eclipsed in fame by Edison and Marconi, it was Tesla's vision that paved the way for today's wireless world.
S28 · E8The Battle of Chosin 2016-11-01 · 55 min
View the intense battle in intimate detail in this vivid narrative of combat and survival in the first major military clash of the Cold War.
S29 · E1Command and Control 2017-01-10 · 55 min
An account of an incident at a Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Ark., in 1980 that almost caused the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying a nuclear warhead 600 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The near-calamity was kicked off when a socket fell from the wrench of an airman performing maintenance in a Titan II silo and punctured the missile, releasing a stream of highly explosive rocket fuel.
S29 · E2Rachel Carson 2017-01-24 · 55 min
She set out to save a species...us. An intimate portrait of the woman whose groundbreaking books revolutionized our relationship to the natural world.
S29 · E3The Race Underground 2017-01-31 · 55 min
The dramatic story of the country's first subway.
S29 · E4Oklahoma City 2017-02-07 · 55 min
On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, a former soldier deeply influenced by literature and ideas of the radical right, killed 168, and injured 675 others.
S29 · E5Ruby Ridge 2017-02-14 · 55 min
A riveting account of the event that helped give rise to the modern American militia movement.
S29 · E6The Great War: Part 1 2017-04-10 · 55 min
Part 1 of 3. President Woodrow Wilson vowed to keep the U.S. out of World War I after hostilities erupted in Europe in August 1914. It was a promise he kept until 1917, when the Germans resumed "unrestricted submarine warfare"— a policy it had started and then stopped in 1915 — and began sinking U.S. ships. An intercepted telegram also showed Germany trying to convince Japan and Mexico to declare war on America.
S29 · E7The Great War: Part 2 2017-04-11 · 55 min
Part 2 of 3. America's entry into World War I is recalled, including the breathtaking speed of mobilization and the profound transformations required for America to play a central role in the conflict.
S29 · E8The Great War: Part 3 2017-04-12 · 55 min
Part 3 of 3. In the fall of 1918: a major American offensive that could bring a swift end to the war, a lost U.S. battalion surrounded by German forces, a deadly flu epidemic on the homefront.
S30 · E1Into the Amazon 2018-01-09 · 114 min
The remarkable story of President Theodore Roosevelt’s journey with legendary Brazilian explorer Candido Rondon into the heart of the South American rainforest to chart an unexplored tributary of the Amazon.