For teachers & educators
You have one week to teach
a lesson students actually remember.
Most teachers spend 10–15 hours a week on lesson prep. Talk to History cuts that to 3 — by putting you in direct conversation with Lincoln, Curie, or the person who actually lived the moment.
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See it in sixty seconds
Watch the film.
From a blank lesson plan to Einstein, Newton, and Curie in one room — in sixty seconds.
A real conversation, right now
Sit with Marie Curie on the discovery of radium.
This is exactly what it looks like inside the app — no mockup, no embellishment.
Marie Curie
Science · Modern EraMadame Curie, I'm teaching the discovery of radium this week and my students think science is just memorizing results. What was it actually like to isolate it? Where do you start?
Teacher mode · discussion questions enabled
Curie · Nobel lecture, 1911
Begin with the shed. Pierre and I worked in a leaking wooden hangar off the Rue Lhomond — no floor but earth, no heat that mattered in winter. It was there we processed tons of pitchblende by hand, stirring boiling cauldrons with an iron rod nearly my own height. The result of a year of that labor was a fraction of a gram. That is where your students should start — not with the answer, but with the tonnage.
Do not teach radium as a fact to be recorded. Teach it as a stubbornness. We knew an unknown element was there only because the ore was more radioactive than its known contents could explain. "One never notices what has been done," I once said, "one can only see what remains to be done." Nobel Lecture, 1911. The discovery was the refusal to accept the discrepancy.
And do not hide the cost. The very glow we admired in those vials at night was damaging us — we did not yet understand it. Science advances by measurement, patience, and a willingness to be wrong for years. Let your students feel the wait before they are handed the result.
Discussion Questions
- ✦Curie processed tons of ore to isolate a fraction of a gram of radium. What does that ratio tell you about how scientific discovery actually happens — versus how textbooks summarize it?
- ✦She and Pierre didn't yet understand radiation's danger. How should a historian judge scientists for risks they couldn't have known about?
Teaching Angle
Don't teach this as a result — teach it as a persistence. The discovery started with a discrepancy no one else would chase. Have students identify the anomaly first, then trace the years of labor to the gram. The point isn't radium; it's the method.
Built for how educators actually work
Three ways it changes your week.
Weekly Lesson Prep
Bring your topic. Talk to the person who lived it. Get the fresh angle your students haven't heard — from inside the moment, not on top of it.
Discussion & Seminar Prompts
Three questions from a 20-minute conversation with Frederick Douglass become a full class period of real discussion. Every reply in Teacher Mode comes with discussion questions already written.
Difficult Topics
Teaching slavery, war, or revolution in your classroom? Ask Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, or a soldier who was there directly — figures who actually lived it, in their own voice.
Teacher mode
Every feature, built for the classroom.
In every conversation
Discussion Questions
Every reply includes ready-to-use discussion questions — for seminars, group work, or a bell-ringer to open class.
Teaching Angles
Classroom-ready framing in every response — the "so what" your students actually need to understand why it mattered.
40+ Figures
Science, philosophy, politics, the arts, exploration, reform — from the Ancient World to the Modern Era, the whole human record, available anytime.
Ask Anyone, Anytime
Lincoln, Marie Curie, Einstein, Frederick Douglass, Cleopatra, Leonardo da Vinci — all speaking in their own voice, from their own era.
Scholar & Classroom plans unlock
Lesson Builder Scholar plan
Turn any conversation into a structured outline: Title, Topic & Era, Big Idea, 3–4 Sections with teaching notes, Real-World Connection, and Discussion Questions. Export to Markdown.
Study Mode Scholar plan
Primary-source citations, competing historical interpretations, and deeper scholarly context layered into every response. For the educator who wants to go all the way into the record before class.
The Council Scholar plan
Put Einstein, Newton, and Curie in the same room. Ask them one question — they respond to each other, not just to you. Cross-era debate on any topic, unprompted.
Classroom Seats Classroom plan
Share your lesson library with your department and co-teachers. Your whole teaching team in one workspace — and at $99/mo for 5+ seats, it costs less per person than a single textbook. Built for schools, museums, and libraries.
Lesson Builder
From conversation to outline
in one click.
This is the actual Lesson Builder output. Export it. Teach it. Keep it in your library for next year's unit.
Lesson Outline
Tons of Ore, One Gram of Radium
Marie Curie · The Discovery of Radium, 1898–1902
Big Idea
Scientific discovery is not a single flash of insight — it is years of physical labor chasing a discrepancy no one else would follow.
Sections
I. The Anomaly No One Chased
Curie's thesis, 1897–98 — pitchblende was more radioactive than its known elements could explain.
Curie starts with a discrepancy, not an answer. Have students identify the anomaly first — resist jumping to the result. The discovery lands harder once they feel the puzzle no one else took seriously.
II. Tons of Ore in a Leaking Shed
The hangar on Rue Lhomond, 1898–1902 — cauldrons of pitchblende, stirred by hand.
This is not a eureka moment. It is four years of manual labor to isolate a fraction of a gram. Teach the tonnage as the point: method and patience, not genius alone, produced radium.
III. The Cost They Couldn't Yet See
Nobel Prizes 1903 & 1911 — and the radiation exposure that shortened her life.
The glow they admired was harming them. Use this to ask how historians should weigh risks scientists couldn't have understood — the ethics arrive after the discovery, not before it.
Real-World Connection
Ask students where a modern discrepancy is being ignored today — a data anomaly, an unexplained result. Curie's lesson isn't radium; it's that progress belongs to whoever refuses to explain the mismatch away.
Discussion Questions
- ✦Why did Curie process tons of ore for a fraction of a gram — and what does that reveal about how textbooks compress discovery?
- ✦What's the difference between a "eureka moment" and years of labor — and why does the myth matter?
- ✦How does the shed on Rue Lhomond change how you picture a "scientist"?
Built from a 20-minute conversation with Curie · Scholar plan
New — The Council
Put Einstein, Newton, and Curie
in the same room.
Ask one question. Three voices answer each other — not just you. This is what a real seminar looks like when the people who built the field are in the conversation.
My students are wrestling with what the universe is fundamentally made of — is it clockwork, curved spacetime, or something we can only measure indirectly? I need three different eras answering each other. Where does each of you start?
Isaac Newton
EnlightenmentBegin where I did: the universe is lawful and absolute. Space and time are a fixed stage; bodies move upon it by forces we can write as equations. Gravity acts across that stage, and from three laws I could predict the planets. Principia, 1687. If it is measurable and repeatable, it is knowable. Let the student master the clockwork before doubting it.
Albert Einstein
Modern EraSir Isaac's stage is beautiful — and not quite real. Space and time are not a fixed backdrop; they bend. Mass tells spacetime how to curve, and curvature tells mass how to move. Your clockwork holds at ordinary speeds, but near light, or great mass, it breaks. I did not discard you, Newton — I found the deeper frame that contains you.
Marie Curie
Modern EraYou both theorize the whole; I measured a piece of it that neither of you predicted. The atom is not the smallest, indivisible thing — it comes apart, and pours out energy on its own. Radioactivity told us matter itself is unstable. Before you argue what the universe is, gentlemen, sit in the shed and measure what it does. The instrument corrects the theory.
The Council keeps talking — even after you step away.
Gather a Council →Scholar plan · any 2–5 figures · any topic · any era
From educators using it now
"This gave me an angle I'd never taught before. I talked to Curie for 20 minutes on Thursday and my Friday class was completely different."
Mr. Delgado
Lincoln High History Dept. · Early access
"I used the Council for a unit on the scientific revolution — Einstein, Newton, and Curie in one session. My students argued about it for the rest of the period."
Dr. Sarah T.
Homeschool co-op · Founding member
"Our whole department uses the shared library. Co-teachers build their own outlines, I review them, and we never duplicate a unit anymore."
James R.
Department chair · Classroom plan
Placeholder testimonials — replace with real educator quotes
Simple pricing
Free to start. The Scholar plan unlocks the Lesson Builder.
No checkout to fight with. Start free, and when you're ready we'll send a simple invoice.
Scholar
$29$19/mo
Founding price — locked for life · first 50 educators
- ✦ Everything in Explorer, unlimited
- ✦ Lesson Builder — structured outlines, export
- ✦ Study Mode — primary sources, cross-references
- ✦ The Council — multi-figure conversations
- ✦ Outline export (.md) for any lesson
Explorer
$0
Free for the curious, anytime.
- ✦ Unlimited conversations with any figure
- ✦ All 40+ figures — Ancient World to Modern Era
- ✦ Teacher mode responses with discussion questions
- ✦ Save & share conversations
Classroom
$99/mo
Your whole teaching team.
- ✦ Everything in Scholar, for up to 5 seats
- ✦ Shared lesson library — whole team sees each other's work
- ✦ Co-teachers, whole departments, museums & libraries
- ✦ Invite by email or shareable link
- ✦ Admin controls for seat management
Common questions
Before you ask your department chair.
Every figure operates under a strict two-shape rule. They either quote the documented record directly — a letter, speech, or lecture, shown with its source — or clearly mark the response as "How I might have answered…" The two never blur. Where the record is thin, they say so rather than invent. This grounding guardrail was built before we launched anything. You remain the historian in the room.
Each figure has a researched system prompt that keeps them inside their own era, field, and documented record. Newton doesn't cite Einstein. Curie doesn't quote a paper written after her death. Every answer is grounded in the sources, with citations on the claims that matter. You stay the historian — we do the legwork and hand you back the hours.
Yes — Classroom Seats let your whole team share a lesson library. Add co-teachers, department members, and museum or library staff to a shared workspace where every outline and conversation is accessible to the whole teaching team.
Science, philosophy, politics, the arts, exploration, and reform — spanning the Ancient World, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Age, and the Modern Era. For a typical week you'll work inside one unit; the broader roster is there when you're teaching across periods or building a comparative lesson.
Yes. Each figure speaks from inside their own era and field — Newton doesn't anachronistically cite relativity, and Curie doesn't pretend to know physics discovered after her death. In Teacher Mode you can also direct the conversation with your own frame. Teaching middle school? Ask for plainer language. Running an AP seminar? Push the figures on the primary sources. The figures respond to the angle you bring. You remain the historian in the room.
Tell us. We work with every educator, and no one is turned away for lack of money. If you're a first-year teacher, a homeschool parent, or a rural school on a tight budget — send us a note and we'll work something out.
The conversation you need
is already waiting.
Talk to Lincoln. Sit with Curie. Press Einstein. Whatever this week's topic demands — the person who lived it is ready. Their words. Their world. In their own voice.
The first 50 educators lock Founding pricing for as long as they stay.