Past Events

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE is pleased to present a preview screening and discussion of our upcoming film,  Nazi Town, USA. The event will feature an extended clip from the film and a panel discussion with film participants.

Featured guests include:

Peter Yost: Writer, producer and director of Nazi Town, USA.

Edna Alburquerque: Producer of Nazi Town, USA.

Beverly Gage: Professor of history at Yale University and the author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

The discussion will be moderated by Cameo George, executive producer of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE.

About the film: In February 1939, more than 20,000 Americans filled Madison Square Garden for an event billed as a “Pro-American Rally.” Images of George Washington hung next to swastikas and speakers railed against the “Jewish controlled media” and called for a return to a racially “pure” America. The keynote speaker was Fritz Kuhn, head of the German American Bund. NAZI TOWN, USA tells the largely unknown story of the Bund, which had scores of chapters in suburbs and big cities across the country and represented what many believe was a real threat of fascist subversion in the United States. The Bund held joint rallies with the Ku Klux Klan and ran dozens of summer camps for children centered around Nazi ideology and imagery, melding the images of Americana with a virulent anti-semitic ideology.

From filmmakers Peter Yost and Edna Alburquerque and executive produced by Cameo George, NAZI TOWN, USA raises thorny issues — from questions of free speech to declarations of “America First” — that we continue to wrestle with today

Nazi Town, USA premieres on Tuesday, January 23rd at 9/8c on PBS.


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Major funding for American Experience provided by Liberty Mutual Insurance and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Funding for Nazi Town, USA provided by members of The Better Angels Society including The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund. Additional funding for American Experience provided by the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, The American Experience Trust, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and public television viewers. American Experience is produced for PBS by GBH Boston.


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Disclaimer: Likenesses shown on promotional materials for this event are composites made from stock photos of models.

The Hot Water Quartet is a collection of gifted musicians performing fresh compositions in the jazz idiom. First forming as the house band for a long-running public jam session, the HWQ has long held the mission of fostering community in the Boston jazz scene. From the banks of the Charles esplanade to church halls to jazz clubs institutions, the HWQ has performed original jazz across New England. The band is made up of Kohlert Saxophone artist Brett Walberg, pianist Hidemi Akaiwa, bassist James Heazlewood Dale, and drummer Henry Godfrey, all mainstays of the New England jazz scene.

Join us for an evening of music, wine, and food. Registration is encouraged for this free event.

Registration is encouraged for this free event.

Join JCC Greater Boston for a compelling evening of conversation with one of the nation's leading writers and political commentators, as part of our Jonathan Samen Hot Buttons Cool Conversations discussion series.

David Brooks is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, a writer for the Atlantic and a regular on the PBS Newshour. He is also the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Second Mountain and The Road to Character.

David Brooks discusses his latest book, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. He offers a practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections in every aspect of our lives. Getting to know and understand others is particularly relevant given the current state of our country and the world.

At the beginning of an uncertain New Year, Cambridge Forum considers America’s position on the international stage with the help of Professor Joseph Nye, one of the country’s foremost thinkers on American foreign policy. For the past eight decades, we have lived in “the American Century” – a period during which the US has enjoyed unrivalled global power – be it political, economic or military. Born on the cusp of this new era, Nye has spent a lifetime illuminating our understanding of the changing contours of America power and world affairs. His many books on the nature of power and political leadership have earned him his reputation as one of the most current & influential world scholars.

Joseph Nye shares his own personal memories of living through the American century. From his early years growing up on a farm in rural New Jersey to his time in the State Department, Pentagon and Intelligence Community during the Carter and Clinton administrations where he witnessed American power up close, shaping policy on key issues such as nuclear proliferation and East Asian security. After 9/11 drew the US into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nye remained an astute observer and critic of the Bush, Obama and Trump presidencies. Today Nye brings a fresh and insightful perspective about America’s future role in the world; its primacy may be changing, but is it for the better?

Musician Jonathan Suazo is a Puerto Rican saxophonist, composer, cultural seeder, and educator. His music treads a beautiful line between intensity and delicacy with notable influences from artists such as Kenny Garrett, David Sánchez, Miguel Zenón and John Coltrane. His formal debut album RICANO is OUT NOW on all platforms and The New York Times named it one of the top ten Jazz albums of 2023.

Registration is encouraged for this free event.

In this dual biography of two famous women whose sons changed the course of the 20th century, the award-winning historian Charlotte Gray breathes new life into Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt. Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons offers a fulsome portrait of how leaders are not just born but made. 

Sara Delano, the mother of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Jennie Jerome, the mother of Winston Churchill, were both born into upper-class America in 1854. A vivacious extrovert, Jennie married Lord Randolph Churchill, a rising politician and scion of a noble British family. Deeply conventional Sara Delano married a man as old as her father. As mothers, both woman turned their energies toward enabling their sons to reach the epicenter of political power on two continents. Set against one hundred years of history and filled with intriguing social insight, Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons reveals how these two remarkable individuals with dramatically different personalities shaped the characters of their adoring sons, men who would go on to change the world. 

Join GBH Music in welcoming the Ulysses Quartet as its first-ever quartet in residence with a free performance at the GBH Studio at the Boston Public Library.

The Ulysses Quartet's season-long partnership as quartet in residence furthers GBH Music's ongoing effort to connect with listeners of all backgrounds and ages. The partnership will span over fifty performances and events throughout the year, including with the Boston Public and Massachusetts schools.

Registration is encouraged for this free event.

Photo credit: Lara St. John

This event is presented with support from CRB and the Ulysses Quartet.

The Ulysses Quartet’s residency at GBH is made possible by a generous contribution from the Mattina R. Proctor Foundation.

Celebrating one of America’s greatest female novelists, this biography brings to life Willa Cather -- her artistry and endurance, her immigrant family and the prairies on they lived, and her trailblazing success as a journalist and writer.

In the early 20^th century, Willa Cather leapt into the forefront of American letters with the publication of her novels O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Antonia (1918). At the time, she was well into middle age. Her success followed years of working in journalism in Nebraska, brief spells of teaching, and editorial work on magazines. Chasing Bright Medusas is her story told by of another mature and highly accomplished writer, the award-winning biographer Benjamin Taylor, a lifelong lover of Willa Cather’s work. Taylor’s elegant exploration of her artistic endurance and of her early years and family, bring us back in time to portray vividly the challenges of being an immigrant family, a woman, and a literary trailblazer -- one the greatest authors of the twentieth century.

Advances in the preservation of tissues, organs, sperm/eggs are revolutionizing medicine. Mehmet Toner is an international pioneer in this field. He describes the significance of the preservation-revival research, the different methods, and how the new breakthroughs will save lives and restore damaged tissue. Methods include specialized forms of supercooling and drying. Some of the models for these developments come from nature: organisms that transition to frozen or dehydrated states for extremely long periods –and then revive.

Ahead of the PBS premiere of The Cost of Inheritance: An America ReFramed Special, join us to Meet the Makers! Director Yoruba Richen, producers Mehret Ayalew Mandefro and Lacey Schwartz Delgado and executive producer Darryl Ford Williams will talk about the making of the film, what reparations can look like across the country and where they think the conversation is going next. Watch the film's trailer now.

The Cost of Inheritance premieres Jan. 8 at 10/9c on PBS, the PBS app, PBS YouTube and worldchannel.org, and on Jan. 15 on  America ReFramed.