Episode
American Experience: The Swamp
Overview
The history of the Everglades is a dramatic yet little known story of humanity’s attempt to conquer nature. The Swamp, told through the lives of a handful of colorful and resolute characters, explores the repeated efforts to reclaim, control and transform what was seen as a vast wasteland into an agricultural and urban paradise, and, ultimately, the drive to preserve America’s greatest wetland.
Details
- Series
- American Experience
- Season
- Season 31
- Episode
- Episode 1
- Air date
- 2019-01-15
- Runtime
- 55 min
Episode context
The Swamp is Episode 1 in Season 31 of American Experience. It aired on 2019-01-15. The runtime is 55 min.
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More episodes from this season
Episode 3: Chasing the Moon - A Place Beyond the Sky
On 4 October 1957, Soviet scientists launched Sputnik 1 - a beach ball-sized, radio-transmitting aluminium alloy sphere - into orbit. The satellite caused a sensation. Amid Cold War tensions, the Soviet Union’s accomplishment signalled a dramatic technological advantage and American felt it had little choice but to join the Space Race.
Episode 4: Chasing the Moon - Earthrise
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Episode 5: Chasing the Moon - Magnificent Desolation
After the immediate celebration of 1968’s successful Apollo 8 mission, underlying questions about the space programme emerged with new intensity as politicized young Americans challenged the nation’s priorities. Nasa pushed brashly forward.
Episode 6: Woodstock
In August, 1969, half a million people from all walks of life and every corner of the country converged on a small dairy farm in upstate New York. They came to hear the concert of their lives, but most experienced something far more profound: a moment that would change them and the country forever, and define a cultural revolution.
Episode 7: The Feud
Anderson Hatfield and Randolph McCoy, the patriarchs of the legendary feud, were entrepreneurs seeking to climb up from hardship after fierce economic competition and rapid technological change had turned their lives upside down. When members of both families took their grievances to court, their dispute escalated into a war between two families and a struggle between two states. The Feud reveals more than an isolated story of mountain lust and violence between “hillbillies” — the Hatfield - McCoy feud was a microcosm of the tensions inherent in the nation’s rapid industrialization after the Civil War.