We source the most compelling, counterintuitive, and overlooked research from the world's leading history institutions — and turn it into podcasts, short-form content, and educational courses for everyday audiences.
Sourced from Harvard, Oxford, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, and beyond. Each topic is selected for its power to surprise, challenge assumptions, and make history feel alive.
Using ancient DNA analysis and consumer genetic databases, Smithsonian researchers identified nearly 42,000 living relatives of 27 African Americans buried near an 18th-century Maryland ironworks. The study is a landmark in community-engaged genetic ancestry research — reconnecting families separated by centuries of slavery.
Coming SoonResearchers translating 700-year-old coroners' inquests discovered that medieval Oxford had the highest homicide rate of any English city — and that university students were the most dangerous demographic. A counterintuitive finding that upends every assumption about academic towns and medieval social order.
Coming SoonArchaeological and archival evidence reveals that people of North African and Middle Eastern descent lived in medieval London and other major port cities — contradicting the persistent myth that medieval Europe was racially homogenous. Trade networks, enslaved people, and diplomats created a more connected world than textbooks acknowledge.
Coming SoonThe Library of Congress preserves hundreds of first-person oral histories from immigrants and migrants collected from the 1930s to today. These digitized accounts let us hear immigration history in the words of those who lived it — complex, contradictory, and deeply human — spanning over 35 countries of origin.
Coming SoonDigital archives at Harvard's Schlesinger Library reveal vibrant LGBTQ communities and networks that existed decades before the modern movement — letters, newspapers, and organizational records showing resilience and community-building that mainstream history erased. Queer history does not begin in 1969.
Coming SoonHarvard's "1800 Histories" project maps over a thousand specific historical sites of outsized methane emissions to show how choices made in the 1800s — about coal, agriculture, and industrialization — directly caused our modern climate predicament. Climate change is not just a science story. It's a history story.
Coming SoonOxford's ongoing colonialism network documents the university's deep entanglement with empire — collections acquired through conquest, scholars who justified imperial rule, and silenced non-Western voices. It is a rare and transparent institutional reckoning that shows how academic prestige and colonial power were built together.
Coming SoonBy integrating genomic data with historical records and community oral histories, the Smithsonian's initiative helps African Americans trace ancestry to specific ethnic groups — Wolof, Kongo, Igbo — and understand the forced migration patterns of the slave trade. Science meets memory in a project about reclaiming identity.
Coming SoonWe believe the best historical research deserves the widest possible audience. By working directly from institutional sources and partnering with AI-assisted production tools, we translate academic rigor into content that is honest, engaging, and built to last.