Search for high-yield Wheat
In the 1940s, plant scientist Norman Borlaug began cross-breeding wheat strains from different regions. He pioneered “shuttle breeding” which sped up the wheat breeding process.
Chapter 1 | The Man Who Tried to Feed the World
The story of the man who would go on to lead a “Green Revolution” of worldwide agriculture programs estimated to have saved one billion lives.
Trailer | Test Tube Babies | American Experience
When the first human egg was fertilized in a lab in 1944, the news spread like wildfire; the press quickly coined the term “test tube baby.”
Chapter 1 | Test Tube Babies
This one-hour documentary tells the story of doctors, researchers, and hopeful couples who pushed the limits of science and triggered a technological revolution in human reproduction.
Chapter 1 | The Polio Crusade
A tribute to a time when Americans banded together to conquer a terrible disease.
Trailer | The Fight | American Experience
Theirs was a rivalry that would draw in two nations inching closer to war, and take the measure of two men — German Max Schmeling and American Joe Louis, who had been fighting all their lives.
Chapter 1 | The Fight
June 22, 1938. Though the Great Depression rages and war looms, the eyes of the world are on Yankee Stadium in New York where, beneath threatening skies, German Max Schmeling and American Joe Louis are squaring off for the heavyweight championship of the world.
Ruby Ridge promo
Drawing upon eyewitness accounts, including interviews with Weaver’s daughter, Sara, and federal agents involved in the confrontation, Ruby Ridge is a riveting account of the event that helped give rise to the modern American militia movement.
Chapter 1 | The Poison Squad
Dr. Harvey Wiley, determined to banish dangerous substances from dinner tables, took on the powerful food manufacturers and their allies. Wiley embarked upon a series of bold and controversial trials on 12 human subjects who would become known as the “Poison Squad.”
Dr. Harvey Wiley: Father of Pure Food
In 1883, Dr. Harvey Wiley joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture as chief chemist. After two decades, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drugs Act in 1906, largely written by Wiley.
McCarthyism: Anatomy of an Investigation
In 1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy declared to Congress that Far East scholar Owen Lattimore was a "top Russian spy." Lattimore tried to clear his name before two congressional committees. He was eventually exonerated but those hearings took a lasting economic and personal toll on the scholar. Here's how they worked.
Langston Hughes on Trial
In 1953, the author Langston Hughes was called before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Investigations to answer questions about Communist influences in his writing. The private, closed-door interrogation pitted Hughes against the Subcommittee’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn. We dramatized the actual hearing transcripts of Hughes’s testimony, made public 50 years later.
Chapter 1 | McCarthy
The rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator whose zealous anti-communist crusade would test the limits of American decency and democracy.
Roy Cohn: Chief Counsel for McCarthy
Senator Joseph McCarthy hired Cohn in 1953 as Chief Counsel for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. McCarthy relied heavily on Cohn—for contacts, information, ideas, and political advice.
Margaret Chase Smith
Senator Margaret Chase Smith asked Senator Joseph McCarthy for evidence to support his allegations of communists in the State Department, but he ignored her requests. In June 1950, Smith delivered a Declaration of Conscience against "the selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance and intolerance. "
Trailer | McCarthy | American Experience
McCarthy chronicles the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator who led a Cold War crusade against Communists.
Joseph McCarthy: Senator of Anti-Communism
In February 1950, McCarthy gave a Lincoln Day address in Wheeling, West Virginia. He claimed that over 200 communists held jobs at the State Department.
Teaser | McCarthy | American Experience
McCarthy chronicles the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator who led a Cold War crusade against Communists. His zealous campaign to root out those he viewed as enemies of the state would test the limits of American decency and democracy.
Simplicity in the White House
On February 2, Carter addressed the nation in a fireside chat on energy. The country had been through an oil scare in 1973. To head off a new crisis, Carter appealed directly to Americans to rally around a new program.
The Gifts of Tony Sarg | American Experience | PBS
Tony Sarg delighted children and adults, alike, with wondrous puppets: from the huge, other-worldly sea serpent that washed up on Nantucket’s shore in 1937 to the giant balloons bounding along New York’s streets in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. An artist and visionary, Sarg was known as the father of modern American puppetry.
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