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A Double Dose of Timeless Unforgettable Storytelling

Watch back to back episodes of the award winning docu-series AMERICAN EXPERIENCE which provides an indepth look at the personalities, events and resources that have had a profound impact on the shaping of America's past and present.

8pm Thursday AMERICAN EXPERIENCE - Polio Crusade
Personal accounts from polio survivors about the disease that paralyzed thousands before Jonas Salk introduces a vaccine to guard against it.

In the summer of 1950 fear gripped the residents of Wytheville, Virginia. Movie theaters shut down, baseball games were cancelled and panicky parents kept their children indoors — anything to keep them safe from an invisible invader. Outsiders sped through town with their windows rolled up and bandanas covering their faces. The ones who couldn’t escape the perpetrator were left paralyzed, and some died in the wake of the devastating and contagious virus. Polio had struck in Wytheville. The town was in the midst of a full-blown epidemic. That year alone, more than 33,000 Americans fell victim — half of them under the age of ten.

American Experience Polio Crusade

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE presents The Polio Crusade, a one-hour documentary from filmmaker Sarah Colt (Geronimo, RFK) that interweaves the personal accounts of polio survivors with the story of an ardent crusader who tirelessly fought on their behalf while scientists raced to eradicate this dreaded disease. Based in part on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky, The Polio Crusade features interviews with historians, scientists, polio survivors, and the only surviving scientist from the core research team that developed the Salk vaccine, Julius Youngner.

9pm TAKEN HOSTAGE - An American Experience Special
Revisiting the Iran hostage crisis, when 52 Americans were held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Unfolding like a political thriller, Taken Hostage tells the story of the Iran hostage crisis, when 52 American diplomats, Marines and civilians were held hostage at the American Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. For the next 444 days, the world watched as the United States received a daily barrage of humiliation, vitriol and hatred from a country that had long been one of our closest allies. Told through the candid, personal testimony of those whose lives were upended by the action, the crisis would transform both the U.S. and Iran and forever upend the focus and direction of American foreign policy.

American Experience Taken Hostage

The film is told largely through the lens of the exceptional love story of former hostage Barry Rosen and his wife Barbara, who was suddenly thrust into the public eye as the crisis dragged on. Other key figures are Hilary Brown and Carole Jerome, two pioneering female foreign correspondents who risked their lives to uncover the truth of what was happening in Iran; Gary Sick, a senior member of President Carter’s national security team and longtime Iran expert; and Colonel James Q. Roberts, a member of the top-secret American commando unit, who recounts details of the failed attempt to rescue the hostages in a daring Special Forces operation. Taken Hostage uses their candid, personal testimonies to tell the story of these dramatic, history-making events.

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