I have struggled a bit with the history and podcasts. On one hand I believe they can be a great way of delivering history to a public audience (no normal person wants to read my articles.) On the other hand, it took me a while to find some that I thought were good history and presented in a compelling way.
The big advantage of presenting through history is reaching that audience. As Liz Covart said in her interview, the general public is very interested in learning history, but traditional scholarly publication is not an ideal delivery method to that audience. The success of heritage tourism has also shown there is a big audience for history, but not everyone has the ability to travel, and the pandemic has shut much of that down as well. But with a smart phone, which it seems just about everyone has, anyone can listen to a podcast.
But how do you find a good podcast? One that provides accurate information and tells a story of historical significance, but one that is not merely a scholarly paper being read out loud. Unlike with scholarly publishing there are no “gatekeepers” to make sure podcasts meet standards of historical research, accuracy, and ethics. Determining that is left to the listener. Luckily, with the success of many podcasts created by scholars, it gives more credence to Covart’s observation about the desire of non-academics to learn good history.
The challenge for historians then, is to make that podcast compelling for the non-academic as well as the academic audience. As I was listening to, and enjoying, the Throughline Podcast on bananas, I couldn’t help but think of my students who always seem to be more drawn to books written by journalists than by historians. “It reads more like a story and not history.” Sigh. Throughline, an NPR podcast, is created and hosted by journalists, and they tell a good story. AND they rely on historians to do some of the heavy lifting. As an NPR production, they also have the staff and resources to add some killer production value in music and travel and interviews and getting the rights to Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat song for part. And they connected it to something we all know and experience but never really think about: why do we eat these strange fruits in the first place? So, yeah, I found that quite compelling.
I will also say, while not having the bells, whistles, and resources that comes with NPR, I found the Consolation Prize podcast quite compelling. I had no idea about Richard Greener before this podcast. The story was quite compelling and the scholars gave clear explanations as to the significance. The editing was done in a way to make it sound a bit more conversational as well. And, while not Harry Belafonte, there was music, which helped to “set a mood.”
Now the challenge would be, how do you reach that audience? NPR podcasts need much less advertising. How do you get the word out about Consolation Prize and reach an audience who would find the story compelling, but probably wouldn’t merely come across the podcast? You can build it, but will they come?
At my institution a few of us have been discussing the possibility of a locally oriented podcast; the working title is “Syracuse in the Crossroads” and would explore the historical events in Syracuse and the surrounding area. I have a colleague who tells our students that in the 1840s and 1850s there was no more exciting place to live in the US than Syracuse. One of the events that happened then was the Jerry Rescue, which involves the arrest and then rescue of a fugitive slave in Syracuse after the passage of the fugitive slave act. It has drama: violence, jail breaks, carriage chases. It has a great cast, besides Jerry himself, there is abolitionist Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, Daniel Webster, just to name a few. It reveals the significance of the growing abolition movement and the role of northern states rights (most people don’t think about that.) And it has historians who have worked to put this into that context that could lend credence to the story. I would love to do this story as a podcast, but with my articles, would the only audience be me and my father?
