15-Minute History

Every era has its titans. Men who look at the rules of commerce, find the gaps, and build empires inside them, until society catches up and writes new rules to contain what they created.
In this episode, we trace the Gilded Age from Carnegie's steel mills and Rockefeller's stranglehold on oil to the garages and server farms of Amazon, Google, and Apple. The methods changed. The underlying logic did not.
Join us every Monday for episodes and discussions, and Thursdays for pop quizzes and Sketches in History. We love hearing from you, so leave a comment below!

Welcome back to Sketches in History! This segment, just for kids, shows that history isn't just a story, it's an adventure. Join Lottie Archer as she dives into her extraordinary notebook, where sketches from history come to life.
In this episode, Lottie finds an old chrome microphone on her grandfather's shelf, with a handwritten card tucked beneath it: This Sunday. Ten o'clock. The President speaks. In this episode, your kids will discover what persuasion looks like, why the way a message is delivered can matter just as much as the message itself, and how the tools a leader uses to reach people can shape what those people believe.
Listen and subscribe to the 15-Minute History podcast to hear Sketches in History every other Thursday. Got a favorite historical moment? Share it with us at [email protected], and it might just make its way into the notebook!

Join Jon and Joe as they discuss how presidents have used, and sometimes botched, major communication mediums from radio to social media, and what it tells us about leadership in modern America.

Welcome back to Sketches in History! This segment, just for kids, shows that history isn't just a story, it's an adventure. Join Lottie Archer as she dives into her extraordinary notebook, where sketches from history come to life.
In this episode, Lottie finds a mysterious bottle of oil and a folded newspaper and follows. The notebook takes her to the Wyoming plains of 1922, where a powerful government official is making a very secret deal beside a rock that looks just like a teapot. But secrets like this can't stay hidden forever. What happens when they are discovered? In this episode, your kids will discover what it means to hold public trust, why integrity matters most when no one seems to be watching, and how honest people doing unglamorous work can hold powerful people accountable.
Listen and subscribe to the 15-Minute History podcast to hear Sketches in History every other Thursday. Got a favorite historical moment? Share it with us at [email protected], and it might just make its way into the notebook!

Every president wants to speak directly to the American people. This has looked different in every era, with the technology helping to shape the man, and most importantly, the perception of the man.
In this episode, we trace how the microphone, the television camera, and everything that followed didn't just deliver the president's words. These mediums rewrote the rules for who could lead and who could not.
Join us every Monday for episodes and discussions, and Thursdays for pop quizzes and Sketches in History. We love hearing from you, so leave a comment below!