October 21, 1879. It’s late in the evening and a 32-year-old inventor is in his New Jersey lab, tinkering with a carbon thread. When that young inventor—Thomas Edison—lights that thread that night, it isn’t quite a “eureka," lightbulb-over-the-head moment, but the lightbulb in his lab did stay lit long enough to convince him he was on the right track. How di ... Show More
Today
How Biddy Mason Found Her Freedom in Los Angeles
November 8, 1864. Election Day. Abraham Lincoln watches from a White House window, convinced he might lose. Three thousand miles away in Los Angeles, a Confederate hotbed in a so-called free state, Biddy Mason has more riding on the result than almost anyone in the country.Sixtee ... Show More
31m 35s
Oct 30
Salem’s First Witch Trial
Happy Halloween! Today, we're bringing back a particularly spooky episode from the archives...June 10, 1692. Bridget Bishop is loaded into a two-wheeled cart and brought from her Salem jail cell to a pasture on a hill, where a rope is hanging from freshly-installed gallows. A cro ... Show More
28m 48s
Oct 26
1066: The Brother Who Broke England (w/ Greg Jenner)
October 28, 1065. The king’s council meets in Oxford and throws a man out of England. His name is Tostig Godwinson, and the north of England already hates him. His own brother Harold, the most powerful earl in the realm and the likely next king, refuses to save him.Tostig does no ... Show More
29m 22s
Aug 2019
#83 Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World
What I learned from reading Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes.
Jeff Bezos on The Electricity Metaphor for the Web's Future
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's ... Show More
1h 50m
Dec 2021
EP134: Origin of Everyday Sayings, The Woman Introducing STEM Careers to Young Girls and Thomas Edison at Menlo Park
On this episode of Our American Stories, Andrew Thompson continues to share another slice from his ultimate guide to understanding these baffling mini mysteries of the English language; Nicole Small, the former CEO of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, shares how she is now ... Show More
38m 16s