Press & Media
Chunks Microlearning is a mobile app that turns complex topics into short, audio-narrated stories you can finish in minutes. Covering history, philosophy, science, mythology, and more, Chunks makes it easy to learn something new every day. Below you will find media coverage and appearances.
For press inquiries, contact us at hello@chunks.app.
Fast Facts
- Founded
- 2025
- Monthly active learners
- 1,000+
- Platforms
- iOS & Android
- Pricing
- Free, with premium
- Topics
- History, philosophy, science & more
- Based in
- United Kingdom
New data · June 2026
Users are turning bedtime phone time into five-minute learning
Chunks analysed anonymised, opt-in product usage data to understand when people choose short-form learning instead of passive scrolling. The clearest pattern: usage clusters around the edges of the day — especially bedtime. Around 31% of story starts happen after 9pm, and another 10% before work in the morning — the moments people most often reach for their phones without a clear intention.
- 31%
- of story starts happen after 9pm
- ~10%
- happen before work in the morning
- 7,066
- stories played since 26 Jan 2026
- 1,341
- users since tracking began
- 2,398
- stories played to completion
- 4×
- growth in monthly plays, Feb–May
Monthly story plays
| Month | Story plays |
|---|---|
| February | 526 |
| March | 793 |
| April | 1,764 |
| May | 2,113 |
| June* | 1,828 |
*June partial, through 24 June 2026. Monthly plays grew roughly fourfold February to May.
Most-started stories
- The Printing Press
- The Asch Conformity Experiments
- Plato's Allegory of the Cave
- The History of Surgery
- The Wonders of the Amazon Rainforest
Top 10 in the full report.
“Most people are not going to stop reaching for their phones at night. The question is what happens next. Chunks is designed to give people a better option in that exact moment: a short, finite story they can finish in a few minutes, instead of another endless feed.”— Andy Shephard, Founder
Figures come from anonymised, opt-in product analytics. The “stories played” figure uses the PostHog story_started event (a user starting a specific story); raw audio-playback events are excluded, as they can fire repeatedly within one story. Story-play tracking began 26 January 2026; completion tracking began separately in late January 2026, so the two are reported as independent counts rather than a single ratio. Analytics are roughly per-device, which can slightly inflate user counts. This is product usage data, not clinical research.
About Chunks
Boilerplate — free to use
Chunks Microlearning is a mobile app that turns complex topics — history, philosophy, science, mythology and more — into short, narrated audio stories you can finish in five minutes. Built as an antidote to doomscrolling, it lets people learn something real in the gaps of their day instead of mindlessly scrolling. Founded in 2025 by software engineer Andy Shephard, Chunks reached 1,000 monthly active learners in 2026. It is available free on the App Store and Google Play.
Founder
Andy Shephard — Founder
Andy Shephard is a software engineer with around 15 years of experience and a mobile developer by trade. He founded Chunks Microlearning in 2025 after looking for a way to replace doomscrolling with something genuinely worthwhile, and couldn't find a good solution. Every story on Chunks is personally researched and reviewed.
“I built Chunks because I wanted the ‘I learned something’ feeling instead of the ‘why did I just scroll for an hour’ feeling. Hitting 1,000 monthly learners tells me a lot of people want the same thing.”— Andy Shephard
Story Angles
A few angles journalists have found compelling. Happy to provide data, interviews, or reader promo codes for any of them.
The antidote to doomscrolling
With "brain rot" named Oxford's 2024 Word of the Year and screen-time anxiety at an all-time high, Chunks offers a constructive alternative — turning idle scroll time into five minutes of real learning.
Solo founder, built from scratch
Software engineer Andy Shephard had the idea chatting with friends, built the app single-handedly, and grew it to 1,000 monthly active learners — a one-person answer to the attention economy.
Microlearning vs. the attention economy
Chunks is a case study in designing technology that respects attention rather than exploits it: short, narrated, finite stories with no infinite feed and no algorithmic rabbit holes.
What People Are Saying
I was looking for a social media alternative that was less mind-numbing, and this is quite good. The combination of music and the story read to you in short ~6-minute segments makes it digestible, but gives enough detail to actually learn something.
It's not book-like. You can jump into the app just for 5–10 mins whenever you have time, and I really like the cute images with each story. I'm not a native speaker, so for me it's kind of a perfect language-learning app too!
Downloaded it yesterday and learned about the 49ers gold rush. It was easy to digest and very informative.
TV & Video Appearances
Kuiper Media
The Future of Micro-Learning: Andy Shephard, Chunks
Andy Shephard joins Kuiper Media to discuss how Chunks is changing the way people learn — replacing doomscrolling with bite-sized stories across history, philosophy, science, and more.
Watch hereJensHGG
I Built a Microlearning App, Then Tested It Against the 4 Best
5 micro-learning apps that actually make you smarter. Want to learn something new every day without sitting through hour-long courses? These are five of the best micro-learning apps out right now. And each one turns spare minutes into real progress in a completely different way.
Watch herePress Kit
Download brand assets below. Need a different format, higher resolution, or additional screenshots? Email hello@chunks.app.
Press Contact
For interviews, quotes, or media inquiries, reach out to hello@chunks.app.