Seasons & episodes
S30 · E2The Secret of Tuxedo Park 2018-01-16 · 55 min
In the fall of 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his country’s most valuable military secret — a revolutionary radar component — to a Wall Street tycoon, Alfred Lee Loomis. Using his connections, his money, and his brilliant scientific mind, Loomis and his team of scientists developed radar technology that played a more decisive role than any other weapon in World War II.
S30 · E3The Gilded Age 2018-02-06 · 113 min
Meet the titans and barons of the glittering late 19th century, whose materialistic extravagance contrasted harshly with the poverty of the struggling workers who challenged them. The vast disparities between them sparked debates still raging today.
S30 · E4The Bombing of Wall Street 2018-02-13 · 55 min
Explore the story behind the first terrorist attack in the U.S., a mostly-forgotten 1920 bombing in the nation’s financial center that left 38 dead – a crime that remains unsolved today.
S30 · E5The Island Murder 2018-04-17 · 55 min
In the summer 1931, Honolulu's tropical tranquility was shattered when a young Navy wife made a drastic allegation of rape against five nonwhite islanders. What unfolded in the following days and weeks was a racially-charged murder case that would make headlines across the nation, enrage Hawai'i's native population, and galvanize the island's law enforcers and the nation's social elite.
S30 · E6The Chinese Exclusion Act 2018-05-29 · 55 min
The origin, history and impact of the 1882 law that made it illegal for Chinese workers to come to America and for Chinese nationals already there to become U.S. citizens.
S30 · E7The Circus (1) 2018-10-08 · 55 min
Explore the early days of this popular, influential and distinctly American form of entertainment during an era when master showmen P.T. Barnum, James Bailey and the Ringling Brothers transformed the nation’s popular culture.
S30 · E8The Circus (2) 2018-10-09 · 55 min
Revisit the heyday of this distinctly American form of entertainment when former rivals Barnum, Bailey and the Ringling Brothers joined forces to present the “greatest show on earth” in big cities and small towns across the country.
S30 · E9The Eugenics Crusade 2018-10-16 · 55 min
The Eugenics Crusade tells the story of the unlikely –– and largely unknown –– campaign to breed a “better” American race, tracing the rise of the movement that turned the fledgling science of heredity into a powerful instrument of social control.
S31 · E1The Swamp 2019-01-15 · 55 min
The history of the Everglades is a dramatic yet little known story of humanity’s attempt to conquer nature. The Swamp, told through the lives of a handful of colorful and resolute characters, explores the repeated efforts to reclaim, control and transform what was seen as a vast wasteland into an agricultural and urban paradise, and, ultimately, the drive to preserve America’s greatest wetland.
S31 · E2Sealab 2019-02-12 · 55 min
In 1969 off the California coast, a US Navy crane carefully lowered a massive tubular structure into the waters. It was an audacious feat of engineering — a pressurized underwater habitat, designed for an elite group of divers to spend days or even months at a stretch living and working on the ocean floor.Sealab tells the little-known story of the daring program that tested the limits of human endurance and revolutionized undersea exploration.
S31 · E3Chasing the Moon - A Place Beyond the Sky 2019-07-08 · 120 min
On 4 October 1957, Soviet scientists launched Sputnik 1 - a beach ball-sized, radio-transmitting aluminium alloy sphere - into orbit. The satellite caused a sensation. Amid Cold War tensions, the Soviet Union’s accomplishment signalled a dramatic technological advantage and American felt it had little choice but to join the Space Race.
S31 · E4Chasing the Moon - Earthrise 2019-07-09 · 120 min
What exactly was it going to take for America to beat the Soviets to the moon? Cold War tensions persisted, as rumours circulated that the Soviets were preparing to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon. Nasa quickly developed the Gemini program, sending astronauts into orbit around the Earth to practice critical manoeuvres for the eventual trip to the moon.
S31 · E5Chasing the Moon - Magnificent Desolation 2019-07-10 · 120 min
After the immediate celebration of 1968’s successful Apollo 8 mission, underlying questions about the space programme emerged with new intensity as politicized young Americans challenged the nation’s priorities. Nasa pushed brashly forward.
S31 · E6Woodstock 2019-08-06 · 55 min
In August, 1969, half a million people from all walks of life and every corner of the country converged on a small dairy farm in upstate New York. They came to hear the concert of their lives, but most experienced something far more profound: a moment that would change them and the country forever, and define a cultural revolution.
S31 · E7The Feud 2019-09-10 · 55 min
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.
S32 · E1McCarthy 2020-01-06 · 55 min
McCarthy chronicles the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator whose zealous anti-communist crusade would test the limits of American decency and democracy.
S32 · E2The Poison Squad 2020-01-28 · 55 min
The story of government chemist Dr. Harvey Wiley who, determined to banish these dangerous substances from dinner tables, took on the powerful food manufacturers and their allies.
S32 · E3The Man Who Tried to Feed The World 2020-04-21 · 55 min
Explore the life of 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, who tried to solve world hunger. He rescued India from a severe famine and led the "Green Revolution," estimated to have saved one billion lives. But his work later faced criticism.
S32 · E4George W. Bush (Part 1) 2020-05-04 · 55 min
The latest in our award-winning series of presidential biographies, this film looks at the life and presidency of George W. Bush, from his unorthodox road to the presidency to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the myriad of challenges he faced over his two terms, from the war in Iraq to the 2008 financial crisis.
S32 · E5George W. Bush (Part 2) 2020-05-05 · 55 min
George W. Bush, part two continues through Bush’s second term, as the president confronts the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina and the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.
S32 · E6Mr. Tornado 2020-05-19 · 55 min
Mr. Tornado is the remarkable story of Ted Fujita, whose groundbreaking work in research and applied science saved thousands of lives and helped Americans prepare for and respond to dangerous weather phenomena.
S32 · E7The Vote (Part 1) 2020-07-06 · 55 min
One hundred years after the passage of the 19th Amendment, The Vote tells the dramatic culmination story of the hard-fought campaign waged by American women for the right to vote, a transformative cultural and political movement that resulted in the largest expansion of voting rights in U.S. history.
S32 · E8The Vote (Part 2) 2020-07-07 · 55 min
Part Two examines the mounting dispute over strategy and tactics, and reveals how the pervasive racism of the time, particularly in the South, impacted women's fight for the vote.
S33 · E1The Codebreaker 2021-01-11 · 55 min
Based on the book The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies, The Codebreaker reveals the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst whose painstaking work to decode thousands of messages for the U.S. government.