In the early days of 1776, Thomas Paine, in Common Sense, issued a call to action to the colonies, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” Now, 250 years later, as we commemorate the founding of our nation, this sense of immediacy continues to ring true. Reinvention and innovation have never been more vital – and yet, I believe, our need for history and context to guide us forward has never been more relevant.

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This summer, history is all around us. Through documentaries, feature films, exhibitions, books, podcasts, shortform videos and historical reenactments, we can find history everywhere. The stories we tell about the past have never been more alive, or more accessible. As media formats have transformed, so too have the possibilities for historical storytelling. The acceleration of technology has been a boon for the world of history, creating new ways to reach audiences hungry to learn more about the past. These formats have also widened the range of stories being told, giving a new generation of history fans the opportunity to discover and share stories about people and events long left out of traditional narratives.

This is what anchors us to something larger than ourselves, a broader, shared experience that connects us across time. When done well, history doesn’t just tell us where we’ve been. It illuminates the questions we’re still wrestling with today and quietly points us toward answers, if we’re willing to look. It contextualizes the present with the past, and above all, it is a powerful reminder that the resilience of the human spirit has always found a way to carry us forward, to places we couldn’t have dreamed possible.

People gravitate toward the personal windows into the past that help us recognize our common humanity and reveal a quieter truth: History is not only made on grand stages by well-known figures, but in the small and often unseen moments when individuals choose to step forward and meet the moment.

George Olson met the moment. At barely 18 years old, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and found himself in the middle of one of World War II’s most harrowing campaigns, surviving a kamikaze attack during the Battle of Okinawa, believed to be the last person to make it off his ship alive. Now 99, he traveled to Philadelphia for our HistoryTalks event commemorating America’s 250th birthday, and I watched as more than 1,500 people of all ages and backgrounds rose to their feet to honor him. As tears welled in his eyes, he reflected on something that had stayed with him for decades, the question of why he survived when so many of his friends never came home. It was one of those rare special moments when personal storytelling and history merge, when we remember that it is people who make history, and when we feel the full emotional power of the past through our very human connections to it.

Many people today feel as though we are living through a uniquely uncertain moment, and it’s hard to argue otherwise. Rapid technological change, global disruption, political division and the rise of artificial intelligence are reshaping how we work, communicate and understand our place in the world. But history offers an important corrective: Every generation has confronted moments that felt unprecedented. Every era has wrestled with uncertainty. The feeling of overwhelming change is not new, what changes is how we choose to meet it. Looking backward is not an exercise in nostalgia. It is a means of gaining perspective. It reminds us that progress is rarely linear, but that resilience and ingenuity have consistently carried societies forward, often toward futures that seemed unimaginable at the time.

My time in Philadelphia also prompted me to think about the evolution of historical storytelling, from the mass publications forged by early American leaders like Ben Franklin to the innovative platforms of today enabled by new technologies.

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That evolution has always been driven by the same instinct, to reach people where they are. Thomas Paine understood this when he wrote Common Sense, a pamphlet cheap enough to reproduce, simple enough to circulate and powerful enough to change the course of a nation. Read aloud in taverns, military camps, churches and gathering places throughout colonial America, it was an early form of mass media.

More than a century later, the medium had changed but the mission had not. Franklin D. Roosevelt took to the radio with his Fireside Chats during the Great Depression and World War II, speaking directly into Americans’ homes to inform, reassure and unify a nation in crisis. Then came television, which added a powerful visual dimension, bringing national moments into living rooms across the country with an immediacy that print and radio never could. Walter Cronkite’s reports on Vietnam, the moon landing broadcast live into millions of homes, these were moments when history wasn’t just reported, it was felt.

The invention of personal computers and smartphones shifted the equation entirely, placing the power of media into the hands of nearly everyone. Today, YouTube channels, podcasts, audiobooks, short-form video and a new generation of digital platforms have democratized not just the consumption of history, but the telling of it. The stories being surfaced now, long overlooked, long marginalized, are redefining what history looks like and who gets to be part of it.

History has always had an audience. What it has always needed, is the right storytellers at the right moment. That moment is now. And the story is still being written.

Paul Buccieri is president and chairman of A+E Global Media, which includes the History Channel.

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