Netflix · Ended

The American Experiment

History · 2026

Last aired: S1 E5, Episode V: Washington's Warning · 2026-06-24

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, The American Experiment reexamines the improbable achievement that was the nation's founding, and the radical question at the center of the revolution: Can a people govern themselves? Featuring an extraordinary range of voices including former vice presidents and cabinet officials, current and former members of Congress, a former Supreme Court justice, leading historians, tribal chiefs, military experts, and thought leaders across the political spectrum, the series presents uniquely bipartisan, wide-ranging, and deeply informed conversations about the origins and future of American democracy.  Tracking the years leading up to the Revolution through the drafting of the Constitution and the first American presidency, The American Experiment explores how a nation built on an untested idea has continued to wrestle with the foundational contradictions of slavery, liberty, individual power, and minority representation — and how American democracy has been built, challenged, and reimagined over the course of two and a half centuries. Cinematic in scope and urgently relevant, The American Experiment reveals how the debates that defined the country's founding era still shape the United States, posing a pivotal question at a moment of profound division: Can this extraordinary experiment endure?