American Experience

Discover the story of the polygraph, the controversial device that transformed modern police work, seized headlines and was extolled as an infallible crime-fighting tool. A tale of good intentions, twisted morals and unintended consequences.

Director(s): Rob Rapley

An in-depth biography of the influential author whose ground-breaking anthropological work would challenge assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority that had long defined the field in the 19th century.

Stars: Vanessa Williams, Bahni Turpin, Lee D. Baker
Director(s): Tracy Heather Strain
Writer(s): Tracy Heather Strain

Part detective story, part sharp social commentary and part pop-culture celebration, Ruthless: Monopoly's Secret History presents the fascinating true story behind America's favorite game.

Two antiwar protests in the fall of 1969 cause President Richard Nixon to cancel his "madman" plans for a massive escalation of the U.S. war in Vietnam.

Scientist Mária Telkes dedicated her career to harnessing the power of the sun. Though undercut and thwarted by her male colleagues, she persevered to design the first successfully solar-heated house in 1948 and held more than 20 patents.

Stars: Andia Winslow
Director(s): Amanda Pollak
Writer(s): Gene Tempest

In the '50s and '60s, deep in the American countryside at the foot of the Catskills, a small wooden house with a barn behind it was home to the first clandestine network of cross-dressers.

Court-mandated social integration unleashes racial unrest throughout Boston in the 1970s as Black and White students are bussed together.

A look at attempts to desegregate schools in Leland, Mississippi.

Stars: Douglas A. Blackmon
Writer(s): Douglas A. Blackmon

The War on Disco explores the culture war that erupted over the spectacular rise of disco music. Originating in underground Black and gay clubs, disco had unseated rock as America's most popular music by the late 1970s. But many diehard rock fans viewed disco, with its repetitive beat and culture that emphasized pleasure, as shallow and superficial. A story that's about much more than music, The War on Disco explores how the powerful anti-disco backlash revealed a cultural divide that to some seemed to be driven by racism and homophobia. The hostility came to a head on July 12, 1979, when a riot broke out at "Disco Demolition Night" during a baseball game in Chicago.