James Redpath and the Lecture Circuit That Rewired American Thought Leadership

In the 1860s, a 5'4" Scotsman with a flair for spectacle built the original thought leadership machine and his model still echoes in every TED talk today.

Ever wonder how the very idea of the “thought leader” was born in America? Before mass media, how did reformers, activists, and intellectuals actually reach a national audience? James Redpath, a Scottish immigrant and former journalist, built a nationwide lecture circuit in the years after the Civil War that fundamentally changed how Americans encountered and were influenced by new ideas. Redpath was five feet four inches tall and weighed just over a hundred pounds. Mark Twain, who knew him well, called him a...