John Schmitz, a history professor at Northern Virginia Community College, reflects on the many teachers who shaped his life. From his kindergarten teacher Mrs. Shepherd to Father Hail, a high school world cultures teacher who blended...

John Schmitz, a history professor at Northern Virginia Community College, discusses the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, one of four controversial laws passed during President John Adams' administration amid fears of foreigners. The Act...

John Schmitz, a history professor at Northern Virginia Community College, discusses his book Enemies Among Us, which explores the relocation, internment, and repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans during World War II....

Kati Marton credits two influential teachers for shaping her passions. Vladimir Petrov, a Russian refugee and professor at George Washington University, inspired her love for international relations through his lived experiences and...

Kati Marton is the author of ten books, currently working on her eleventh. She focuses on uncovering lesser-known historical figures to illuminate broader political and historical themes. Her debut was a biography of Raoul Wallenberg, a...

Kati Marton discusses her 10th book, The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel, her first biography of a woman. She highlights Merkel’s extraordinary rise as a triple outsider—a woman, a scientist, and an East German...

Gopal Krishnamurthy reflects on three transformative teachers who deeply shaped his thinking and practice. Dr. S. Ramanathan, a master of Karnatic music, taught him to listen differently—valuing a child’s “wrong” note as a doorway to...

Gopal Krishnamurthy reflects on his journey in teacher education and the concept of transformative education—not just seeking new answers, but learning to ask new and deeper questions. He is turning his PhD dissertation into a book...

Gopal Krishnamurthy, founding director of a transformative education center and faculty member at Antioch University, challenges conventional frameworks of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Using the familiar visual metaphor of...

Nelson Mandela was a leader who helped bring freedom and fairness to South Africa. In this episode, we’ll learn how he stood up against unfair laws that treated people differently because of their skin color. He spent many years in...

Step back in time and explore the story of the Massachusetts Bay Colony! In this video, we take a look at how the Puritans left England in the 1600s to build a new life in North America. Learn why they came, how they settled, and what...

Discover how computer science began—from early calculators and codes to the powerful computers we use today. Meet key thinkers like Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing, and learn how programming, algorithms, and problem-solving led to the...

Travel back to medieval Europe and meet Charlemagne, the king who built one of the largest empires since ancient Rome. Charlemagne worked to unite many different peoples and helped spread learning, art, and new ideas across Europe....

Meet Cesar Chavez, a leader who stood up for farmworkers and changed history. In this easy-to-understand video, you’ll learn how Cesar Chavez grew up working in the fields and saw how unfair life was for many farmworkers. He believed in...

Mary Anne Franks, professor of law at George Washington Law School, recently published Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment. In the book, she explores the concept of "fearless speech," drawn from the ancient Greek idea...

Samantha Barbas, a professor of law at the University of Iowa, discusses her book Actual Malice: Civil Rights and Freedom of the Press in New York Times v. Sullivan. The book explores the landmark 1964 Supreme Court case, which arose...

Samantha Barbas's favorite teacher wasn’t someone from her early schooling, but a colleague she met while beginning her career as a professor at Chapman University: historian Robert “Bob” Slayton. Bob profoundly influenced her approach...

Dava Sobel, known for her work on astronomy, decided to explore the life of Marie Curie—despite Curie not being an astronomer. To do so, Sobel had to learn chemistry, which she found challenging. She turned to three influential high...

Dava Sobel, a longtime science writer, came to the subject of women in science relatively late in her career. While researching her book The Glass Universe, about women astronomers at Harvard, she was struck by how much she had...

David Greenberg, a historian and professor at Rutgers University, recently authored John Lewis: Life, the first comprehensive biography of civil rights icon and longtime Georgia congressman John Lewis. Greenberg chose to write this book...

Khatchig Mouradian is a lecturer at Columbia University specializing in the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire, and the legacies of genocide. A descendant of Armenian genocide survivors and a child of the Lebanese Civil War, his work is...

H.W. Brands shares that the teacher who had the most influence on his career was his ninth-grade history teacher, Joe DeJardin. Though he didn’t realize it at the time, DeJardin's radical experiment deeply shaped his path. He split the...

Agustina Paglayan is a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego, specializing in the intersection of politics and education policy. She is the author of Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education...

Richard Evans, a Welsh-born historian and Professor Emeritus of History at Cambridge University, developed an early interest in German history after witnessing post-WWII bomb damage in London. His academic journey led him to study the...