History

  In our next episode of the Six Years that Made the Middle East, we look at 1979. In the aftermath of the Six Days...

In our Six Years That Made the Modern Middle East podcast series, we come to 2003, the year of the US invasion of Iraq....

In our Six Years That Made the Modern Middle East podcast series, we come to our finale episode 2011. This is the year of...

Thucydides (c. 460–c. 400 BCE) stands as one of the most influential thinkers of the ancient world—an Athenian historian, general, and analyst whose work...

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) remains one of the most provocative and influential political thinkers in Western history—a Florentine diplomat, historian, philosopher, and civil servant whose...

International relations has always been, at its core, an attempt to make sense of why nations compete, cooperate, and sometimes collide. Long before the...

Our podcast series and story The Empire: A 250 Year American Story begins here! Step into "the world before Columbus"—a world far more complex,...

In this episode of our podcast series The Empire: A 250 Year American Story, we continue our look at the old world, before the...

The newest series from JB Shreve & the End of History podcast opens with an invitation—not to nostalgia, not to outrage, but to clarity....

The next episode in our podcast series The Empire: A 250 Year American Story, revisits the familiar story of Christopher Columbus—but strips away the...

  The latest episode of The Empire: A 250‑Year American Story plunges listeners into the turbulent world that shaped the earliest European settlements in North...

This episode traces the unlikely, often harrowing path that led a small band of English believers to the edge of a continent—and into the...

This episode of The Empire: A 250 Year American Story zooms in on the origins of the first English colonies, tracing how their distinct...

This episode continues the unfolding story of the original thirteen colonies, tracing how distinct communities—often separated by belief, ambition, and circumstance—took root along the...

Long before Europeans set foot on the continent, long before the United States existed even as an idea, a powerful and sophisticated culture flourished...

Long before the skyscrapers of New York or the missions of California, long before Europeans imagined a world beyond the Atlantic, a remarkable civilization...

Christopher Columbus was born between late August and late October of 1451 in the bustling maritime Republic of Genoa, a world where the sea...

This episode traces the southern arc of Britain’s North American colonies and the forces that quietly reshaped them long before independence was on anyone’s...

The newest episode of Empire: A 250 Year American Story steps into the threshold of the American Revolution—not through battles or declarations, but through...

In this episode of The Empire: A 250‑Year American Story, JB Shreve traces the moment when Britain and its American colonies first realized they...

The story of American independence is often remembered as a clean break—an inevitable march toward liberty guided by visionary founders. This episode peels back...

When we imagine Europe on the eve of Columbus’s 1492 voyage, we often picture a continent brimming with confidence—cathedrals rising, kings expanding their power,...

Between 900 AD and 1492, the Catholic Church stood as the most powerful institution in Europe—spiritually, politically, and economically. Its monasteries preserved learning, its...

Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano was born in 1485 in Medellín, Spain, to a family of minor nobility. Though his lineage carried...

Hernando de Soto was born around 1496 in Jerez de los Caballeros, in the Extremadura region of southwestern Spain—a land of rugged hills, poor...

Francisco Vázquez de Coronado was born around 1510 in Salamanca, Spain, into a noble but not wealthy family. As a younger son, he would...

Bartolomé de las Casas stands as one of the most remarkable and morally complex figures of the early colonial era—a man who began his...

The American Revolution is often remembered as a clean, heroic struggle—Minutemen at Lexington, Washington at Valley Forge, Paul Revere racing through the night. But...

The American Revolution enters its most turbulent phase in this installment of The Empire: A 250 Year American Story. What begins as a northern...

The latest episode of The Empire: A 250 Year American Story returns to the Revolutionary War at the moment the conflict shifts south—where the...

  This post is part of our collection and series The Empire: A 250 Year American Story. Each week for the duration of 2026, new...

The American Revolution may have ended on the battlefield, but the true test of the new nation began in the uneasy silence that followed....

The latest installment of The Empire: A 250 Year American Story traces the turbulent years when the young United States stood on the brink...

America’s identity has always been wrapped in a tension between faith, history, and national myth. This episode steps back from the chronological march of...

The early American republic did not emerge fully formed from the Revolution—it had to be invented, argued over, and lived into by real people...

The election of 1800 didn’t unfold with muskets or barricades, yet it transformed the United States more profoundly than many events that did. This...

George Washington’s Farewell Address stands among the most influential political documents in American history. Published in September 1796 as he prepared to retire from...

Alexander Hamilton rose from obscurity in the Caribbean to become one of the indispensable architects of the United States. As George Washington’s trusted aide...

The United States emerged from the American Revolution united in victory but divided almost immediately over what that victory meant. The Constitution had settled...

Few Native American leaders have inspired as much admiration as Tecumseh and his younger brother, Tenskwatawa, better known as the Prophet. Together, they led...

Few Americans have become as legendary as Daniel Boone. In popular imagination, Boone was the fearless woodsman wearing buckskin, carrying a long rifle, and...

Episode 20 of The Empire: A 250 Year American Story traces the moment when the young United States stepped out of its revolutionary shadow...

America’s westward surge in the first half of the nineteenth century wasn’t just a geographic story—it was the moment the young republic transformed its...

The early nineteenth century was a turning point in the American story—a moment when the nation’s identity, economy, and spiritual life were all being...

The story of the Trail of Tears is one of the most tragic chapters in American history. It was not simply the forced movement...

The Second Great Awakening was one of the most influential religious movements in American history. Sweeping across the United States between roughly 1790 and...

The Beecher family became one of the most influential families in nineteenth-century America, standing at the crossroads of revival religion, education, abolitionism, women’s rights,...

Christian dispensationalism is one of the most influential theological systems to emerge from the modern evangelical world. For millions of Christians, it provides the...

Before the Civil War, the United States experienced an explosion of religious experimentation unlike anything in its previous history. The same forces that fueled...

This episode steps away from the main political storyline of The Empire: A 250 Year American Story to examine the experiences of those who...