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History Programs You Can Watch Right Now

No membership required

Below is a list of some of the best history documentaries and shorts by Nebraska Public Media and PBS. All of these shows are available to watch right now without a membership - for FREE. Just click the titles and press play. And, you can find many of them in the FREE PBS Video app for your Roku, Apple TV, Samsung Smart TV, Fire TV Stick, phone or tablet. Enjoy!

Nebraska Public Media original productions are noted with an asterisk (*). 

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Nebraska Public Media Originals

*'68: The Year Nebraska Mattered
*A Day in the Life of Husker Football
*A Duty to Protest (Nebraska Stories)
*A Love Letter to Louise (Nebraska Stories)
*A Marginal Romance (Nebraska Stories)
*A Name to Remember All (Nebraska Stories)
*A Promise Kept (Nebraska Stories)
*A Quilt of Honor (Nebraska Stories)
*A Street of Dreams
*Against the Current (Nebraska Stories)
*Atlanta Revisited
*Bago Boys
*Betty’s One Room School (Nebraska Stories)
*Big-Time Radio in Clay Center (Nebraska Stories)
*Bob Gibson's Legacy (Nebraska Stories)
*Bright Eyes (Nebraska Stories)
*Capitol Fountains (Nebraska Stories)
*Coach Devaney
*Coach Osborne: More Than Winning
*Code Name Looking Glass (Nebraska Stories)
*D-Day and the Oldfield Effect (Nebraska Stories)
*Doc Middleton, The Unwickedest Outlaw (Nebraska Stories)
*Dust Covered Dreams (Nebraska Stories)
*Echoes of War
*Edwina Justus (Nebraska Stories)
*Emery Blagdon And His Healing Machine
*Final Call for Lincoln Telephone (Nebraska Stories)
*Forgotten World (Nebraska Stories)
*Fort Hartsuff on the Sandhills Frontier (Nebraska Stories)
*Four Seasons in the Sandhills
*Gentle Valor (Nebraska Stories)
*Great Bison Kill (Nebraska Stories)
*Great Plains Rail Tales
*Guardians of the Baton (Nebraska Stories)
*Hearts of Zambia
*High Noon at Winnetoon (Nebraska Stories)
*Homecoming: The Impact on Nebraska Veterans
*Homemade Astronaut
*Honor Flight Reflection (Nebraska Stories)
*Husker Century - Part 1 Pioneer Spirit
*Husker Century - Part 3 Pioneer Spirit of Champions
*Huskers March the Rose Parade (Nebraska Stories)
*Invisible People (Nebraska Stories)
*Journey to the Wall (Nebraska Stories)
*Kearney Goes to War: Remembering the Homefront
*Libraries of Stone (Nebraska Stories)
*Looking for Bliss (Nebraska Stories)
*Lost Writer Ervin Krause (Nebraska Stories)
*Marooned in the South Pacific (Nebraska Stories)
*Miracle on the Prairie (Nebraska Stories)
*Nebraska Volleyball Championship: Destination Omaha
*Nebraska's Capitol Masterpiece
*Nebraska's Schindler (Nebraska Stories)
*Nebraska's Tuberculous Hospital (Nebraska Stories)
*Nebraska's Tuskegee Heroes (Nebraska Stories)
*No Ordinary Reunion (Nebraska Stories)
*Nuns at Work (Nebraska Stories)
*On the Frontline: Nebraskans at War in Iraq
*Only in Nebraska (Nebraska Stories)
*Our Daily Bread (Nebraska Stories)
*Racing's Ultimate Insider (Nebraska Stories)
*Remembered Voices
*Remembering Kloefkorn (Nebraska Stories)
*Restoring the Big Boy (Nebraska Stories)
*Return of the Sacred Pole
*Safe Harbor (Nebraska Stories)
*Sally Bard's War Stories (Nebraska Stories)
*Shadows on the Screen (Nebraska Stories)
*Solomon Butcher: Frontier Photographer
*Standing Bear's Footsteps
*Still Fighting (Nebraska Stories)
*Stratcom 9/11: A Different Doomsday
*Testament (Nebraska Stories)
*The Anti-Horse Thief Society (Nebraska Stories)
*The Boys from the Barrio (Nebraska Stories)
*The Chief Goes to Washington
*The DeWitty Settlement (Nebraska Stories)
*The Dundee Theater (Nebraska Stories)
*The Forgotten Artist (Nebraska Stories)
*The Girl From Broken Bow (Nebraska Stories)
*The Last Homesteader’s Tractor (Nebraska Stories)
*The Legacy of General John J. Pershing (Nebraska Stories)
*The Lure of the Land (Nebraska Stories)
*The Most Beautiful Man in the World (Nebraska Stories)
*The Old Windmill (Nebraska Stories)
*The Path to Sainthood (Nebraska Stories)
*The Quiet Billionaire (Nebraska Stories)
*The Quiet Power of Danelle Smith (Nebraska Stories)
*The Statue on the Hill (Nebraska Stories)
*The Sutton House (Nebraska Stories)
*The War Comes to Nebraska
*Tom Osborne: A Legacy Beyond the Game
*Victims of Peace (Nebraska Stories)
*Walk Ons: Huskers' Edge
*War Quilts (Nebraska Stories)
*William, Luther and Cody (Nebraska Stories)
*With Helpless Terror (Nebraska Stories)
*Yours, Willa Cather

African Lost boy with bag on top of his head

Africa

Firestone and the Warlord
Lost Boys of Sudan

Ancient

Decoding the Great Pyramid
The Nero Files
The Real Trojan Horse

Frank Lloyd Wright design Sutton House

Architecture

Hollywood’s Architect
Paul Revere Williams
*The Sutton House (Nebraska Stories)

California

Beach Culture
Before the Dodgers
Bootlegger Tunnels: A Journey Through LA’s Prohibition Lore
Borderlands
Building the Metropolis
Coded Geographies
Descanso Gardens
Desert Fantasy
Discovering the Universe
Dream Factory
Fantasyland
Ghost Town
Griffith Park: The Untold Story
Pacific Rim
Reshaping L.A.
Shindana Toy Company: Changing the American Doll Industry
Three Views of Manzanar: Adams, Lange, Miyatake
Venice
Wild L.A.
Wild West
Yosemite

Street sign displaying Wall Street

Capitalism

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
American Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos
Money, Power and Wall Street
The Business of Disaster
The Facebook Dilemma
The Secret History of the Credit Card

Civil Rights

The Fight
Underground Railroad: The William Still Story

Person wearing personal protective equipment putting on goggles

Disasters

Ebola in Congo
Fire in Paradise
The Big Burn
*With Helpless Terror (Nebraska Stories)

Early America

Ben Franklin’s Bones

Man standing in front of 4 tanks in Tiananmen Square

East Asia

Battle for Hong Kong
Myanmar’s Killing Fields
On the President’s Orders
The Tank Man

Food

LA Foodways
The Poison Squad

Great Britain

Arthur’s Lost Kingdom

Microscopic view of a virus

Health

Chasing Heroin
*Dust Covered Dreams (Nebraska Stories)
Flint’s Deadly Water
*Hearts of Zambia
*Nebraska's Tuberculous Hospital (Nebraska Stories)
Outbreak
Right to Fail
The Age of AIDS

Four Holocaust survivors

The Holocaust

Memory of the Camps
Shtetl
The Last Survivors

Woman holding child with man holding child in background

Immigration

Immigration Battle
Marcos Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
North Korea’s Deadly Dictator
Separated: Children at the Border
Targeting El Paso
Zero Tolerance

Looking up at the columns in front of the Supreme Court
A sharply divided Supreme Court has ruled that the Biden administration overstepped its authority in trying to cancel or reduce student loans for millions of Americans. Conservative justices were in the majority in Friday's 6-3 decision that effectively killed the $400 billion plan that President Joe Biden announced last year.

Justice

American Patriot
Last Days of Solitary
Life on Parole
Out of Gitmo/Forever Prison
Second Chance Kids
Supreme Revenge
The Gang Crackdown
The Mueller Investigation
The Trial of Ratko Mladić

Latin America

Drug Lord: The Legend of Shorty

Black and white photo of two middle eastern rivals

Middle East

Bitter Rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia
Children of Syria
For Sama
Losing Iraq
Mosul/Inside Yemen
Netanyahu at War
Our Man in Tehran
Saudi Arabia Uncovered
The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia

Emery Blagdon standing in his studio surrounding by his eclectic works of art

Music, Arts & Humanities

*A Love Letter to Louise (Nebraska Stories)
*A Marginal Romance (Nebraska Stories)
*A Quilt of Honor (Nebraska Stories)
*Big-Time Radio in Clay Center (Nebraska Stories)
*Emery Blagdon And His Healing Machine
*Forgotten World (Nebraska Stories)
*Guardians of the Baton (Nebraska Stories)
*Huskers March the Rose Parade (Nebraska Stories)
*Lost Writer Ervin Krause (Nebraska Stories)
*Remembered Voices
*Remembering Kloefkorn (Nebraska Stories)
*Shadows on the Screen (Nebraska Stories)
*Solomon Butcher: Frontier Photographer
*The Dundee Theater (Nebraska Stories)
*The Forgotten Artist (Nebraska Stories)
*The Most Beautiful Man in the World (Nebraska Stories)
*War Quilts (Nebraska Stories)
*Yours, Willa Cather

Myths

Monstrum

Black and white photo of Chief Standing Bear posing for a portrait with his family

Native Americans

*A Promise Kept (Nebraska Stories)
*Against the Current (Nebraska Stories)
*Bright Eyes (Nebraska Stories)
*Return of the Sacred Pole
*Standing Bear's Footsteps
*The Chief Goes to Washington
*The Quiet Power of Danelle Smith (Nebraska Stories)
*The Statue on the Hill (Nebraska Stories)

Nebraska's Capitol Masterpiece cover image with exterior view and view of rotunda floor

Nebraska

*Betty’s One Room School (Nebraska Stories)
*Capitol Fountains (Nebraska Stories)
*Final Call for Lincoln Telephone (Nebraska Stories)
*Four Seasons in the Sandhills
*Libraries of Stone (Nebraska Stories)
*Miracle on the Prairie (Nebraska Stories)
*Nebraska's Capitol Masterpiece
*Only in Nebraska (Nebraska Stories)
*Our Daily Bread (Nebraska Stories)
*The Anti-Horse Thief Society (Nebraska Stories)
*The Girl From Broken Bow (Nebraska Stories)
*The Last Homesteader’s Tractor (Nebraska Stories)
*The Lure of the Land (Nebraska Stories)
*The Old Windmill (Nebraska Stories)
*The Quiet Billionaire (Nebraska Stories)

Barack Obama and Donald Trump on opposite sides of picture

Politics

*'68: The Year Nebraska Mattered
America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump
Anti-Abortion Crusaders
Bannon’s War
Emma Goldman
Gunned Down
Hillary’s Class
McCain
Secrets, Politics and Torture
The Abortion Divide
Trump’s Road to the White House
Trump’s Takeover
Trump’s Trade War
United States of Secrets
Waco: The Inside Story
War on the EPA

Poverty

Left Behind America
Poor Kids
Poverty, Politics and Profit

Jagged rocks rising from the ground

Prehistory

*Great Bison Kill (Nebraska Stories)
Great Human Odyssey
Making North America Human
Making North America: Life
Making North America: Origins

Race

*A Street of Dreams
*Invisible People (Nebraska Stories)
*Looking for Bliss (Nebraska Stories)
Separate and Unequal
*The DeWitty Settlement (Nebraska Stories)
The Eugenics Crusade
Two American Families

Great Plains Rail Tales cover art with locomotive

Railroad

*Edwina Justus (Nebraska Stories)
*Great Plains Rail Tales
*Restoring the Big Boy (Nebraska Stories)

Exterior of a Mormon Temple

Religion

From Jesus to Christ
God in America
*Nuns at Work (Nebraska Stories)
Secrets of the Vatican
*Testament (Nebraska Stories)
The Mormons
*The Path to Sainthood (Nebraska Stories)

Renaissance

Decoding da Vinci

Black and white photo Vladimir Putin

Russia

Putin’s Revenge
Putin’s Way

Astronaut on a space walk waving to camera with Earth in the background

Science

Chasing the Moon
Forgotten Genius
*Homemade Astronaut
Sealab

Tom Osborne: A Legacy Beyond the Game. Osborne looking down in thought

Sports

*A Day in the Life of Husker Football
*Bago Boys
*Bob Gibson's Legacy (Nebraska Stories)
*Coach Devaney
*Coach Osborne: More Than Winning
*Husker Century - Part 1 Pioneer Spirit
*Husker Century - Part 3 Pioneer Spirit of Champions
League of Denial: The NFL’s Corruption Crisis
*Nebraska Volleyball Championship: Destination Omaha
*Racing's Ultimate Insider (Nebraska Stories)
*Tom Osborne: A Legacy Beyond the Game
*Walk Ons: Huskers' Edge

Various images depicting Stratcom immediately following 9/11

Terrorism

American Terrorist
Confronting ISIS
My Brother’s Bomber
*Stratcom 9/11: A Different Doomsday
Terror in Europe
The Man Who Knew
The Rise of ISIS
The Secret History of ISIS
Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald

The Big Picture

Blank on Blank
History Detectives
The Origin of Everything

Three soldiers squatting in front of humvee

War and Revolution

*A Name to Remember All (Nebraska Stories)
*A Duty to Protest (Nebraska Stories)
*Atlanta Revisited
Bush’s War
*Code Name Looking Glass (Nebraska Stories)
*D-Day and the Oldfield Effect (Nebraska Stories)
*Echoes of War
*Fort Hartsuff on the Sandhills Frontier (Nebraska Stories)
*Gentle Valor (Nebraska Stories)
Hallowed Grounds
*Homecoming: The Impact on Nebraska Veterans
*Honor Flight Reflection (Nebraska Stories)
*Journey to the Wall (Nebraska Stories)
*Kearney Goes to War: Remembering the Homefront
*Marooned in the South Pacific (Nebraska Stories)
*Nebraska's Schindler (Nebraska Stories)
*Nebraska's Tuskegee Heroes (Nebraska Stories)
*No Ordinary Reunion (Nebraska Stories)
Obama at War
*On the Frontline: Nebraskans at War in Iraq
*Safe Harbor (Nebraska Stories)
*Sally Bard's War Stories (Nebraska Stories)
*Still Fighting (Nebraska Stories)
*The Boys from the Barrio (Nebraska Stories)
The Hunt for Nazi Scientists
*The Legacy of General John J. Pershing (Nebraska Stories)
*The War Comes to Nebraska
The War of 1812
*Victims of Peace (Nebraska Stories)
*William, Luther and Cody (Nebraska Stories)
World War Speed

Black and white portrait of Doc Middleton

Wild West

Annie Oakley
*Doc Middleton, The Unwickedest Outlaw (Nebraska Stories)
*High Noon at Winnetoon (Nebraska Stories)

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