American Experience: Season 30
Season 30 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 29.
- 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 30 Progress Shield
Into the Amazon
Jan 9, 2018 · 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 unexplor
The Secret of Tuxedo Park
Jan 16, 2018 · 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, Alf
The Gilded Age
Feb 6, 2018 · 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 Bombing of Wall Street
Feb 13, 2018 · 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
The Island Murder
Apr 17, 2018 · 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 fol
The Chinese Exclusion Act
May 29, 2018 · 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.
The Circus (1)
Oct 8, 2018 · 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 Broth
The Circus (2)
Oct 9, 2018 · 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 eart
The Eugenics Crusade
Oct 16, 2018 · 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 fledglin