American Experience: Season 15
Season 15 Lore Primer
Key plot threads, lore context, and character stakes you need to remember before diving into this season.
- Directly follows the overarching narrative developments of American Experience Season 14.
- Faction dynamics and core character alliances shift under escalating external stakes.
- Crucial mysteries introduced previously reach key turning points and narrative reckonings.
- Sets up serialized story arcs that build directly toward the climactic season finale.
Episode Guide
Season 15 Progress Shield
Jimmy Carter (1): Jimmy Who?
Nov 11, 2002 · 55 min
An evocative two-part profile of Jimmy Carter explores how his career has been shaped by what former speechwriter Hendrik Hertzberg calls his "moral ideology." Produced by Adriana
Jimmy Carter (2): Hostage
Nov 12, 2002 · 55 min
"Hostage," the conclusion of a two-part Jimmy Carter biography, covers his presidency and post-presidency. Human rights were to be "a basic tenet of our foreign policy," Carter dec
Chicago: City of the Century (1): Mudhole to Metropolis
Jan 13, 2003 · 55 min
A three-part history based on historian Donald L. Miller's book "City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America." Part 1 begins with the arrival of French explo
Chicago: City of the Century (2): The Revolution Has Begun
Jan 14, 2003 · 55 min
A three-part history based on historian Donald L. Miller's book "City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America." Part 2 covers the 1870s and '80s, when the ci
Chicago: City of the Century (3): Battle for Chicago
Jan 15, 2003 · 55 min
A three-part history based on historian Donald L. Miller's book "City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America." Part 3 concludes by exploring the city's ethn
The Murder of Emmett Till
Jan 20, 2003 · 55 min
Recalling the 1955 murder of a 14-year-old black youth in the Mississippi delta, an incident that could very well have launched the civil-rights movement. "He was a sacrificial lam
Transcontinental Railroad
Jan 27, 2003 · 55 min
Charting the race between the Union Pacific and Central Pacific to construct a transcontinental railroad to link the U.S. It ended May 10, 1869, in Promontory Point, Utah. The cons
Partners of the Heart
Feb 10, 2003 · 55 min
Chronicling the unlikely partnership between a white surgeon and a black "technician" that led to a procedure to correct blue-baby syndrome in 1944. The principals: Vivien Thomas,
The Pill
Feb 24, 2003 · 55 min
Charting the development of an oral contraceptive during the 1950s and its effect on "the sexual revolution" of the '60s. It was enormous. Says Sylvia Clark, who grew up before the
Daughter from Danang
Apr 7, 2003 · 55 min
"Daughter from Danang," an Oscar-nominated documentary, chronicles the tearful reunion of an Amerasian refugee with her Vietnamese family 22 years after the war ended. Heidi Bub, w
Seabiscuit
Apr 21, 2003 · 55 min
"Seabiscuit" recalls the squat and ugly racehorse that riveted the nation in the late 1930s. Interviewees include author Laura Hillenbrand ("Seabiscuit: An American Legend"), who c
Bataan Rescue
Jul 7, 2003 · 55 min
"Bataan Rescue," narrated by Scott Glenn, recalls the daring January 1945 commando raid that freed 513 survivors of the 1942 Bataan Death March who were being held in a Japanese PO
Murder at Harvard
Jul 14, 2003 · 55 min
Historian Simon Schama ("A History of Britain") plays sleuth -- searching, he says, "not for literal truth, but for poetic truth" -- as he speculates about whether an innocent man