Conversations: What is actually taught in our history classrooms, w/ Brendan Gillis
Release Date: 05/02/2025
The Worst Military Decision in Ancient History
History Shorts
In 415 BCE, Athens made an extraordinary decision: invade Sicily. The expedition was enormous. Confidence was high. And one of its chief architects was Alcibiades—a brilliant, charismatic, and notoriously unpredictable Athenian politician and general. Then everything began to unravel. Before the campaign was properly underway, Alcibiades was recalled to Athens to face charges of sacrilege. Instead of returning, he defected to Sparta—and began advising Athens’ greatest enemy on how to defeat the expedition he had helped create. Over the next two years, strategic mistakes, political...
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The Rise of Catherine the Great
History Shorts
In 1744, a 14-year-old German princess arrived in Russia to marry the heir to the Russian throne. She spoke little Russian, had few resources of her own, and barely knew the man who would become her husband. But Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst began reinventing herself. She learned Russian, converted to Orthodox Christianity, took the name Catherine, immersed herself in Enlightenment ideas, and spent years cultivating relationships within the Russian court. Then, in 1762, her husband became Emperor Peter III. His reign lasted just six months. With Peter increasingly isolated, Catherine secured the...
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South Sea Company - The Original Economic Bubble
History Shorts
In 1720, London was gripped by an investment frenzy. Companies appeared almost overnight, promising fortunes from everything imaginable—and sometimes from nothing at all. One notorious prospectus supposedly offered shares in “an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.” Investors bought in anyway. At the center of the mania stood the South Sea Company, whose shares skyrocketed during 1720 before spectacularly collapsing. Politicians were implicated, fortunes disappeared, and even Isaac Newton lost heavily after getting caught up in the boom. The scandal shook...
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Two Days in Berlin 1961 - Cold War (Almost) Turns Hot
History Shorts
On October 27, 1961, ten American tanks and ten Soviet tanks faced each other across Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin—loaded, ready, and separated by barely 100 meters. For sixteen hours, a single shot could have triggered a confrontation between two nuclear superpowers. But behind the scenes, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev were communicating through a secret backchannel. Kennedy offered a way out: withdraw the Soviet tanks first, and the Americans would follow. Khrushchev did. The Soviets reversed. Thirty minutes later, the Americans followed. The crisis ended without a shot. In this...
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Seven Days in Korea - To Fight or Not to Fight?
History Shorts
At 4:00 a.m. on June 25, 1950, North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. Within days, President Harry Truman moved from supplying the South Koreans to ordering American air and naval support—and then committing U.S. ground troops. He did so without asking Congress for a declaration of war, presenting American intervention as action in support of the United Nations. At a press conference, the conflict was famously described as a “police action” rather than a war. The phrase captured something remarkable about how America had entered the conflict: not through...
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Morris - The Forsaken Founder w/ Scott Greenberger
History Shorts
Gouverneur Morris wrote “We the People.” He fought slavery on the floor of the Constitutional Convention. Washington turned to him when the army was starving. Hamilton’s widow asked him to give the eulogy. He stayed in Paris through the Reign of Terror—wooden peg leg and all. Then history forgot him. Historian and journalist Scott S. Greenberger joins me to talk about his new book, The Forsaken Founder: Gouverneur Morris, the Unsung Patriot Who Wrote the Constitution, Stood Up to Slavery, and Survived the Reign of Terror. We get into who actually drafted the Constitution, why “We the...
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Eight Days in Manila - When the U.S. Became an Empire
History Shorts
On May 1, 1898, Commodore George Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay. Then the cable went silent. For nearly a week, Americans had no reliable news from the Philippines. Newspapers speculated that Dewey had been defeated, captured, or perhaps had never fought at all. Meanwhile, events in Manila kept moving. Dewey worked with Filipino revolutionary Emilio Aguinaldo, whose forces soon resumed their campaign against Spanish rule. By the time news of Dewey’s victory reached the United States, the Philippines had suddenly become central to a much larger question: Would America replace...
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Four Days in April - The Spark of the Civil War
History Shorts
At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, Confederate artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. For 34 hours, thousands of shells rained down on the fort. Remarkably, no one was killed during the bombardment. The first fatality came after the surrender. As the Union garrison fired a ceremonial salute to the American flag before evacuating, a cannon accidentally exploded, killing Private Daniel Hough. Three days later, Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion. The proclamation accelerated the secession crisis, and Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North...
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Six Days in March - The End of the Roman Republic
History Shorts
On March 15, 44 BC, Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by a group of Roman senators who believed they were saving the Republic. Five days later, their plan was already unraveling. At Caesar’s public funeral, Mark Antony displayed Caesar’s bloodied and torn toga before an enraged Roman crowd. Violence erupted. Caesar’s body was burned on an improvised pyre in the Forum, and the mob turned against his assassins. Brutus and Cassius fled Rome. Within two years, both were dead. Within thirteen, Augustus ruled the Roman world. The conspirators killed Caesar to preserve a political system that...
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Eight Days in August - The Collapse of Japan
History Shorts
In the early hours of August 15, 1945, Japanese officers stormed the Imperial Palace. Their target wasn't the emperor. It was a phonograph record. Recorded on August 14, it contained Emperor Hirohito's announcement accepting surrender. The conspirators sealed the palace, cut communications, killed the commander of the Imperial Guard, and spent hours desperately searching for the recording. They never found it. Hidden among palace documents, the record survived. The coup collapsed at dawn, and at noon, millions of Japanese citizens heard their emperor's voice for the first time, announcing...
info_outlinePeter speaks with the Director of Teaching and Learning at the American Historical Association about the organization's newest and largest-ever survey of history education in American secondary schools.
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