American Experience: Season 23
Season 23 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 22.
- 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 23 Progress Shield
God in America (Parts 1–2)
Oct 11, 2010 · 55 min
A New Adam explores the origins of Christian religion in America and examines how the New World changed the faiths that the settlers brought with them. A New Eden explores how an u
God in America (Parts 3-4)
Oct 12, 2010 · 55 min
During the 19th century, the forces of modernity challenged traditional faith and drove a wedge between liberal and conservative believers.
God in America (Parts 5-6)
Oct 13, 2010 · 55 min
Hour five explores the post-World War II era, when rising evangelist Billy Graham tried to inspire a religious revival that fused faith with patriotism in a Cold War battle with Go
Robert E. Lee
Jan 3, 2011 · 55 min
Robert E. Lee, the leading Confederate general of the American Civil War, remains a source of fascination and, for some, veneration. Few public figures have ever held a such a fir
Dinosaur Wars
Jan 17, 2011 · 55 min
From PBS and American Experience - In the summer of 1868, paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh boarded a Union Pacific train for a sightseeing excursion through the heart of the ne
Panama Canal
Jan 24, 2011 · 55 min
In 1914, the Panama Canal connected the world’s two largest oceans. American ingenuity and innovation had succeeded where the French had failed disastrously, but the U.S. paid a pr
The Greely Expedition
Jan 31, 2011 · 55 min
In 1881, 25 men led by Adolphus Greely set sail from Newfoundland to Lady Franklin Bay in the high Arctic, where they planned to collect a wealth of scientific data from a vast are
Triangle Fire
Feb 28, 2011 · 55 min
It was the deadliest workplace accident in New York City’s history. A dropped match on the 8th floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory sparked a fire that killed over a hundred in
The Great Famine
Apr 11, 2011 · 55 min
The little-known story of the American effort to relieve starvation in the new Soviet Russia in 1921, The Great Famine is a documentary about the worst natural disaster in Europe s
Stonewall Uprising
Apr 25, 2011 · 55 min
In 1969, homosexuality was illegal in almost every state... but that was about to change. The Stonewall riots marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement.
Soundtrack for a Revolution
May 9, 2011 · 55 min
The story of the American civil rights movement told through the freedom songs protesters sang on picket lines, in mass meetings, in paddy wagons and in jail cells as they fought f
Freedom Riders
May 16, 2011 · 55 min
They called themselves the Freedom Riders, and they managed to bring the president and the entire American public face to face with the challenge of correcting civil-rights inequit