History podcasts for kids
Find out how a zipper works or who really found Tutankhamun's tomb. These short AI-generated history podcasts cover inventions, everyday objects, discoveries, a famous bridge and a skyscraper photograph. They were made for a general audience, and we chose them for family listening with children of about 8 to 12. Read the content notes below before you press play.
Before you play: the zipper, umbrella, Golden Gate Bridge and Wright brothers' engine episodes each mention a death in one sentence, and the zipper episode mentions the First World War in passing. The bridge, Tutankhamun and Neptune episodes describe people denied credit or arguing over it. Several episodes open by referring to an earlier one from their show, and the Ada Lovelace episode is an imagined interview, not a real recording.
10 episodes · Open an episode in the browser player, or read its transcript and available sources.
Start here · Everyday objects · 15 min
The Button: Five Thousand Years of Useless Genius
Podcast · The Origin of Things · 15 min 26 sec · English audio
Buttons began as decoration in the Indus Valley around 2800 BC. The narrator explains how the buttonhole, invented in 13th-century Germany, turned them into fasteners, why kings wore diamond buttons, and why the zipper never replaced them.
Inventions · 11 min
The Zipper's Forty-Year Struggle
Podcast · The Origin of Things · 10 min 40 sec · English audio
From a boot clasp that kept popping open at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to Gideon Sundback's interlocking metal scoops, this episode follows the inventors who spent decades making the zipper work, and how it got its name.
Everyday objects · 13 min
How the Umbrella Came in from the Sun
Podcast · The Origin of Things · 13 min 14 sec · English audio
Umbrellas started as sunshades for Egyptian and Assyrian royalty. Hear how China waterproofed them, how Jonas Hanway was mocked for carrying one in London's rain, and how Samuel Fox's steel ribs made them cheap enough for everyone.
Bridges · 6 min
The Mathematician Behind the Golden Gate Bridge
Podcast · Unsung Witness · 5 min 34 sec · English audio
Two hosts tell the story of Charles Alton Ellis, who worked out the bridge's calculations by hand with a slide rule, was fired in 1931 and left off the plaque, yet whose figures still match how the bridge moves.
Inventions · 4 min
Charlie Taylor and the Wright Brothers' Engine
Podcast · Unsung Witness · 4 min 27 sec · English audio
When no car maker would build the Wright brothers a light engine, their bicycle mechanic Charlie Taylor built one in six weeks from a rough sketch. Hear how his work helped the 1903 Flyer leave the ground at Kitty Hawk.
Inventions · 5 min
Mr. Watson, the First Person to Hear a Phone Call
Podcast · Unsung Witness · 4 min 36 sec · English audio
Thomas Watson was the machinist who turned Alexander Graham Bell's sketches into working devices. Hear about the plucked steel reed that proved Bell's idea, the famous 1876 call, and the farming, acting and shipbuilding Watson tried afterwards.
Archaeology · 5 min
The Water Boy Who Found Tutankhamun's Tomb
Podcast · Unsung Witness · 4 min 44 sec · English audio
In 1922 a 12-year-old water carrier, Hussein Abdel-Rasoul, struck a carved stone step in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. Two hosts explain how it led to Tutankhamun's tomb and why the boy was left out of the official story.
Discoveries · 6 min
How Two Mathematicians Found Neptune
Podcast · Breakthrough Chronicles · 6 min 8 sec · English audio
In the 1840s Uranus kept drifting off its predicted path. John Couch Adams in England and Urbain Le Verrier in France each calculated where an unseen planet should be, and in 1846 Johann Galle spotted Neptune from Berlin.
Buildings · 5 min
The Real Story of 'Lunch atop a Skyscraper'
Podcast · Snapshot Stories Weekly · 4 min 50 sec · English audio
Eleven ironworkers eat lunch on a steel beam high above Manhattan in 1932. Two hosts explain why the famous photo was a publicity stunt, who probably took it, and what is known about the men in it.
Inspiring people · 4 min
An Imagined Interview with Ada Lovelace
Podcast · History Unlocked · 4 min 11 sec · English audio
In an imagined late-night interview, a host talks with Ada Lovelace about Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine and her 1843 notes, which pictured machines making music and are often described as the first computer program.