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The Lobotomist

Aired January 21, 2008

In the 1940s Dr. Walter Freeman gained fame for perfecting the lobotomy, then hailed as a miracle cure for the severely mentally ill. But within a few years, lobotomy was labeled one of the most barbaric mistakes of modern medicine.

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Oswald's Ghost

Aired January 14, 2008

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963 left a psychic wound on America that is with us still today.

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Alexander Hamilton

Aired May 14, 2007

The underappreciated genius who laid the groundwork for the nation's modern economy — including the banking system, Wall Street, and an "opportunity society" in which talent and hard work, not birth, determined success.

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The Mormons

Aired April 30, 2007

A four-hour exploration into the richness, the complexities and the controversies of the Mormons' story as told through interviews with members of the church, leading writers and historians, and supporters and critics of the Mormon faith.

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Summer of Love

Aired June 12, 2018 | 60 min

A fleeting moment in the turbulent history of the 1960s, the Summer of Love's underlying message left an indelible impression on those who witnessed it.

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Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple

Aired April 9, 2007

In 1978 over 900 people led by Rev. Jim Jones died in the largest mass murder-suicide in history, at Jonestown, Guyana. The story is told by survivors, Temple defectors, relatives, and journalists.

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Sister Aimee

Aired April 2, 2007

Sister Aimee tells the dramatic life story Aimee Semple McPherson, the controversial, charismatic, wildly popular evangelist who was instrumental in bringing conservative Protestantism into mainstream culture and American politics.

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New Orleans

Aired February 12, 2007

New Orleans: the utterly original American city that lies at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi and at the beating heart of the great American experiment. Walled in on almost all sides by water, pressed together by the demands and dangers of geography, the crowded streets of New Orleans have always been a laboratory where the social forces that characterize American life play out in dramatic and, at times, disastrous fashion. Over the course of two provocative hours, American Experience tells the story of this remarkable city.

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The Living Weapon

Aired February 5, 2007

The international race to develop biological weapons during the 20th century.

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The Berlin Airlift

Aired January 29, 2007

It could have been the start of World War III. Instead, it became the largest humanitarian campaign the world had ever seen. On June 24, 1948, one of the first major crises of the Cold War occurred when the Soviet Union blocked railroad and street access to West Berlin. For nearly a year two million civilians and twenty thousand allied soldiers in the city's western sector were fed and fueled entirely from the air.

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The Gold Rush

Aired November 6, 2006

The sight of gold in the rushing waters of the American River sent a ripple around the world and set the stage for an event that would forever change a city, a fledgling state, and the nation.

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The Great Fever

Aired October 30, 2006

In 1900, Major Walter Reed, Chief Surgeon of the U.S. Army, led a medical team to Cuba on a mission to investigate yellow fever. For more than two hundred years the disease had terrorized the United States, killing an estimated 100,000 people in the nineteenth century alone. Shortly after Reed and his team arrived in Havana, they began testing the radical theories of Carlos Finlay, a Cuban doctor who believed that mosquitoes spread yellow fever.

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