Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis. Permission is given for a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author. i Democratizing History? The significance of historical podcasts in the dissemination and popularization of history. A thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History at Massey University, Manawatū Campus, New Zealand. David John Garwood-Bish 2022 ii Abstract A return to the oral tradition, historical podcasts constitute a pioneering component of today’s historical discourse that challenge the traditional boundaries of how the past is considered and presented. The popularity of these podcasts and the increasing proliferation of the podcasting medium as a means of sharing complex historical information has significantly exceeded written texts among public audiences in recent years. This has created new avenues through which academic historians can connect with public audiences. Moreover, the nature of this technology democratizes both the creation and success of these oral histories. Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History and Patrick Wyman’s The Fall of Rome and Tides of History illustrate the different approaches to presenting the past that podcasts permit. Both engage in contemporary historical discourse in a new and unique manner through the freedom offered by podcasting technology, utilizing the oral and aural dimensions of verbal storytelling that cannot be conveyed by the written word, while also drawing on established academic historiography to preserve the accuracy and authenticity of the history presented. iii Acknowledgments I would first like to give my deepest gratitude to my supervisors Associate Professor Kirsty Carpenter and Associate Professor Geoff Watson for their extensive guidance and encouragement over the past two years. Without the weight of their knowledge and experience this dissertation would never have made it to completion. I wish to extend my thanks to Mathew Potter for the time he spent reading through and noting those grammatical errors that had the unique quality of being invisible to my eyes. His help was greatly appreciated. I would also like to thank my parents for their unending love and support throughout this process, as well as my grandfather who, through his stories about the past, helped to foster my interest in it. Finally, I also owe my thanks to Dan Carlin, Patrick Wyman, and the many other history podcasters who go unmentioned in this paper for producing such engaging and informative works of history. Many quiet hours have been filled with their voices. iv Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgments iii Contents iv Introduction and Terminology 1 Chapter One: Podcasting: Conception and Proliferation 4 Chapter Two: Literature Review: How do historical podcasts fit into today’s historiography? 12 Chapter Three: Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History” 24 Chapter Four: Patrick Wyman’s “The Fall of Rome” and “Tides of History” 46 Chapter Five: Discussion 65 Conclusion 77 Bibliography 79 Appendices 101 1 Introduction and Terminology With the explosive growth of digital resources over the past two decades, podcasts have firmly established their presence as a prominent new medium for the communication of complex information. Amongst its sub-genres, a place for the historical podcast has also been carved, and this new voice for history is growing more influential with each passing year. While not to the complete exclusion of academic historians, it is important to note that many of these podcasts are the work of enthusiasts of history who translate past events into narrative form for public consumption. Yet despite this, it would be remiss to categorize historical podcasters as simple storytellers. Many present comprehensive histories constructed from the works of recognized experts within the historical discipline and show significant awareness of the issues that a telling of the past faces. However, the intent of the creators, whether amateur or academic, and the style in which these histories are presented are in many cases contrary to the traditional academic purpose for which history is written. The prioritization of an engaging narrative flow, the intent to immerse the listener within the past in an experiential sense, and the consequent proclivity for drama rather than detail are near ubiquitous in prominent works. Moreover, the medium itself, a presentation through audio, adds an altogether new dimension to both narrative history and to discourse about history within the discipline itself. This paper is concerned with how historical discourse is being constructed and retold through a new technological medium, the similarities it shares with amateur histories of the past and its relationship to the standardized methods and suppositions about history that are present in academia today. This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first is a summary of the origins of podcasting technology, a clarification of exactly what is being referenced by the term podcast and what is not, how the medium functions as a practical matter, as well as its growth and the extent of the proliferation of podcasts today. This chapter also highlights the rapidity with which podcasts have permeated into the cultural consciousness as a method of communication, that in part, shapes how individuals in the modernized western countries understand and interact with the world. The second chapter looks at the discourse around modern historical theory, with particular attention given to post- modern historical thought, as well as the rise of public history from the nineteen- 2 seventies onwards. Specifically, this chapter focuses on the purpose for which history is written and where podcasts fall into modern historiography; detailing why historical podcasting is not a return to a pre-academic past but an extension of modern historiography despite the dissonant lack of academic interest in it. Significant reference is made to the arguments of Hayden White and Keith Jenkins as to how history is and should be written. The third and fourth chapters each analyze the works of history podcasters with very different approaches and aims in their work: the ‘fan of history,’ Dan Carlin and a specialist in the history of the Roman Empire, Patrick Wyman. These analyses illustrate that while historical podcasts do not constitute an entirely new step in historiography by themselves, as an amalgamation of modern historical practices and traditional oral presentation the medium allows for such unique approaches to the presentation of history that it may as well be considered as such. This perspective is made more pronounced by the inexorable entrenching of podcasts, and by extension history podcasts, within the cultural consciousness to such a degree that they can now be considered a supplement, if not a partial replacement to older media from which the public traditionally received historical information. The fifth and final chapter discusses several consequences of podcasting technology that are alluded to briefly throughout the thesis. Specifically: podcasts’ disruptive nature and the rise of a new class of public intellectuals with access to an audience incomparably larger and more varied than any orator in the past. The democratizing elements exhibited in how the public engages with this new medium. And finally, what the reification of history that can be observed in both Carlin and Wyman’s works suggests about the various ways that history can be presented to a public audience. First, it is necessary to make clear terms that will be used throughout this dissertation. To begin, ‘oral’ history in the context of this paper refers to the presentation of history through the spoken word, rather than the methodological tools for collecting information that typical discussions around oral history allude to;1 the oral presentation 1L. Abrams, Oral History Theory 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2016), https://doi- org.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/10.4324/9781315640761. Lynn Abrams defines oral history as the “method of research. It is the act of recording the speech of people with something interesting to say and then analysing their memories of the past.” Sam Park, “Introduction: (Re-)Inserting the Producer and Process Into the Research Equation,” in Oral History Reimagined: Emerging Research and Opportunities (Hershey: IGI Global, 2020), 1-26. https://doi-org.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/10.4018/978-1-7998-3420-5.ch001. Sam Pack similarly summarizes oral research as a method of historical inquiry in the first chapter of Oral History Reimagined. https://doi-org.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/10.4018/978-1-7998-3420-5.ch001 https://doi-org.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/10.4324/9781315640761 https://doi-org.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/10.4324/9781315640761 3 of history as opposed to the aggregation of historical evidence from an oral source. Use of this term is necessary however, as it corresponds with aural history, which describes a much broader, inclusive dimension of audio. Oral history, in this sense, is the direct counterpart to written history, being simply the voicing of the written word, while aural history is all that is heard by the listener of a podcast, including sound effects, music, timing, vocal intonations, changes in volume, and so on. This distinction is particularly of note within the context of podcasting, as the latter complements the former to add nuance and detail that the written word is unable to replicate. ‘History’, the ‘past’, and ‘historiography’ also need to be clarified as they have been so rigorously discussed and debated in the context of modern and post-modern historical theory. As such, this paper adopts the definitions of other historians as listed below. ‘History,’ according to its Greek origins, is an “inquiry into the past” with “the genre of history writing as an account of past events.”2 Histories are, more specifically, “verbal structure[s] in the form of a narrative prose discourse… [that] combine a certain amount of ‘data,’ theoretical concepts for ‘explaining’ these data, and a narrative structure for their presentation.”3 The ‘past’ comparatively, is “made up of events and entities which once existed but no longer do,”4 the events before now as they actually occurred, forever lost to the present and separate from the reconstructions that historians put to paper. Lastly, when speaking of ‘historiography,’ this paper is referring to the collective discourse on history available in the Western world. This is not limited to the boundaries of modern academic work, and instead, follows the definitional structures laid out by John Burrow in A History of Histories5 and his predecessor, R. G. Collingwood in The Idea of History as including all historical work that sought to investigate “res gestae: actions of human beings that have been done in the past;” from Greaco-Roman mythological quasi- history to the micro-histories of today.6 While these terms may carry a different definition in other texts, within this dissertation they should be understood in no broader or narrower of a sense than as laid out above. 2Hayden White, The Practical Past (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2014), 51. 3Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Ninetenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1973), preface IX. 4White, The Practical Past, preface XIII. 5John Burrow, A History of Histories (London: Allen Lane, 2007). 6R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (London: Oxford University Press, 1946), 9. 4 Chapter One: Podcasting: Conception and Proliferation The term podcast refers to a “downloadable digital media file typically composed of audio content”7 that became popularized throughout the early 2000’s. While similar to radio broadcasting in many respects, podcasting delineated from traditional media through the technical advantages afforded by the development of internet-based utilities. The most significant of these advantages was the great reduction of barriers to entry in creating and distributing audio files, as well as, on the consumers end, significantly increased ease of accessibility and the ability to listen when, where and how they would like. In 2001, podcasting was a term recognized by only a small niche of developers and technology pioneers. Today podcasts are ubiquitous to such a degree that they are now arguably the predominant medium for long-form audio communication in the modern world. The importance of this medium has also been largely understated in academic literature. In part this is because the transformation from incipience to ubiquity took a period of less than two decades. It is however, worth detailing that transformation here to fully illustrate the role that podcasts, and more particularly historical podcasts, have in the procurement of information in the lives of individuals today. In 2001, internet entrepreneur Adam Curry, alongside friend and programmer Dave Winer began experiments with bootstrapping audio data files to RSS (Really Simple Syndication8) based subscription feeds, creating a framework for the method of distribution that has become prevalent today.9 In less technical terms, the RSS framework allows any individual with an internet connection to subscribe to a distributor or ‘feed’, and their device will automatically refresh at set intervals to update 7Jim Greene, “Podcast,” Salem Press Encyclopedia of Science (2019). http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=93788168&site=eds- live&scope=site. 8Shelley Powers, Practical RDF: Solving Problems with the Resource Description Framework (Sebastopol: O'Reilly Media, 2003). This acronym has seen several variations since its creation, originally RSS stood for RDF Site Summary, however with changes in technology, it was updated to Rich Site Summary and finally to Really Simple Syndication. Each of the abbreviated are used in reference to different software, however engagement at the user end of each version is similar. David Winer, the programmer who bootstrapped audio files to RSS is most commonly associated with Really Simple Syndication. For a comprehensive overview of the technology. 9Dave Winer, “Payloads for RSS,” accessed June 4, 2020, http://scripting.com/davenet/2001/01/11/payloadsForRss.html. http://scripting.com/davenet/2001/01/11/payloadsForRss.html http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=93788168&site=eds-live&scope=site http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=93788168&site=eds-live&scope=site 5 them with the latest content released. This removed the necessity for users to manually search for and confirm releases one by one, saving time and apprising users of releases within seconds of being shared: “listeners can, through subscriptions, have each new podcast delivered directly and automatically to a designated computer where they are immediately available for listening” a process far faster than publication.10 While the technology was innovatively applied, it was not until 2005 that, outside of the small niche of technologically literate early adopters, RSS feeds with the adjoined media of podcasts would see significant public exposure. This was a consequence of several developments that immediately followed the turn of the century. For one, Apple’s integration of podcasts into the popular iTunes software drew attention to the medium, made navigation of the medium “more fluid,”11 and brought the word ‘podcast’ into mainstream use.12 At the same time, to replace the then dated dial-up internet connections, broadband internet was also becoming more common, from 6% of adults in the United States having home broadband in 2001 to 36% by the end of 2005, and 62% by 2009.13 This allowed for much higher volumes of data transfer and reduced the impediments that data caps and limited transfer speeds had on downloading digital media. Reportedly, by 2006 12% of internet users had downloaded podcasts,14 a figure that rose to 19% in the following two years.15 Moreover, mainstream recognition of podcasting’s viability as a method of communicating with a public audience and the creation of applications for operating systems other than Apple’s IOS continued to accelerate the adoption of the format over the next decade. Both the total download figures and the scope of content produced expanded exponentially. Jumping forward to 2020, statistics showed that 55% of the United States population, some 155 million people, had listened to a podcast, with sixteen million across a wide 10John F. Barber, “Digital storytelling: New opportunities for humanities scholarship and pedagogy,” Cogent Arts & Humanities (2016): 5. 11Richard Berry, “A Golden Age of Podcasting? Evaluating Serial in the Context of Podcast,” Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22, no.2 (2015): 172. https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2015.1083363. 12Cyrus Farivar, “10 years of podcasting: Code, comedy, and patent lawsuits,” accessed June 11, 2020, https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/10-years-of-podcasting-code- comedy-and-patent-lawsuits/2/. 13“Internet/Broadband Fact Sheet: Home broadband use over time,” Pew Research Center, last modified April 7, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/. 14Mary Madden, “Podcast Downloading,” accessed June 5, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2006/11/22/podcast-downloading/. 15Ibid. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2006/11/22/podcast-downloading/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/10-years-of-podcasting-code-comedy-and-patent-lawsuits/2/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/10-years-of-podcasting-code-comedy-and-patent-lawsuits/2/ https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2015.1083363 6 demographic reportedly consuming podcasts regularly.16 Complete and accurate data regarding total consumption is, unfortunately, unobtainable as there is ‘no unified source of listening data,’17 from which to draw from and many sources obfuscate download statistics for practical, largely financial reasons. To compound the minimal data provided by large corporations, there is also the unavoidable reality that one download does not correspond with one listen,18 in the same way that “metrics of consumption [of written texts…] fail to capture the complete reading process.”19 Nevertheless, an extremely conservative estimation of figures does still express some of the degree to which podcasts have proliferated in popular culture today. The most prolific example of this, the most downloaded podcast of all time, The Joe Rogan Experience had, according to several news outlets, an average of eleven million viewers per show in the final months of 2021.20 In contrast, the biggest show on cable news networks in the United States, Tucker Carlson Tonight, reached only 3.7 million views per episode in mid-January 2022.21 Amongst popular history specific podcasts, Carlin’s Hardcore History consistently passes well over a million downloads each episode.22 Another show, Mike Duncan’s History of Rome was cumulatively downloaded over 100 million times as of 2017;23 it would be remiss not to assume that these numbers have continued to increase in last few years. These figures illustrate the tremendous influence that any individual can achieve in the new public square with little more than a microphone and a computer. This is particularly salient when considering that, of the best selling historical literature today (almost exclusively works of popular universal 16Ross Winn, “2020 Podcast Stats & Facts (New Research From April 2020),” accessed June 5, 2020, https://www.podcastinsights.com/podcast-statistics/. 17Berry, “A Golden Age of Podcasting?” 173. 18Pete Davies, “Downloads, listens, listeners, and about those podcast numbers,” accessed June 11, 2020, https://medium.com/@pete/downloads-listens-listeners-and-about-those-podcast-numbers- 73a5ee3e2fca. 19Simon Peter Rowberry, “The limits of big data for analyzing reading,” Participations Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 16, no.1 (2019): 237- 238. 20Tyler Durden, “Mainstream Media Is "Being Swallowed" By Joe Rogan,” January 8, 2022, https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/mainstream-media-being-swallowed-joe-rogan. 21“Total Viewing: Cable Network TV,” Neilsen, accessed February 3, 2022, https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/top-ten/. See Appendix 1 for a captured image of data from retrieval date. 22 Slate, Jeremy Ryan, “Hardcore History Host Dan Carlin on Toughness and What We Can Learn from History,” Grit Daily, accessed June 9, 2020, https://gritdaily.com/dan-carlin/. 23“The Storm Before the Storm: An Interview With Historian and Podcast Superstar Mike Duncan,” Daily Stoic, accessed June 9, 2020, https://dailystoic.com/mike-duncan/. https://dailystoic.com/mike-duncan/ https://gritdaily.com/dan-carlin/ https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/top-ten/ https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/mainstream-media-being-swallowed-joe-rogan https://medium.com/@pete/downloads-listens-listeners-and-about-those-podcast-numbers-73a5ee3e2fca https://medium.com/@pete/downloads-listens-listeners-and-about-those-podcast-numbers-73a5ee3e2fca https://www.podcastinsights.com/podcast-statistics/ 7 history24) only a select few have ever surpassed a million copies sold,25 with the vast majority selling less than a thousand copies following their release.26 It is apparent then, that popular historical podcasts can, and sometimes do, have much greater influence on public audiences than many of the most prestigious academic historians’ written works today. Alongside, and partially influenced by its increase in listeners, the typical idea of what a podcast is has evolved – although arguably, it has become increasingly difficult to describe what a ‘typical’ podcast constitutes, as the variety in genre, length, production quality, and purpose for which a show is made is now so expansive. Generally speaking however, the overarching trend has been a shift away from high-cost, professional, radio like productions from major companies and towards more personal, amateur and often unedited content; although the former do still exist. In many cases, a show will first gain a following and then increase its production quality, progressing from an independent creator simply speaking into a cheap microphone, to a creator speaking into an expensive microphone in perhaps a small recording studio with additional editing in post production. Fundamentally however, the necessary core cost of creating a podcast, an individuals time, does not change. A podcast does not need high technical skill or costly publishing, marketing and distribution institutions, and this mitigates many of the inexorable limitations placed on expensive productions to manage financial risks on behalf of its investors. For this reason alone, it is no surprise that podcasting is considered a “highly liberating platform”27 by those who have experience in legacy media, that from its inception functioned as both a “meritocratic and democratic”28 form of emergent media. Moreover, the fact that “there are no set limits to the content or length of a podcast” and very “few hard limits to what a podcast must be or how it is consumed”29 has meant that any individual who would consider uploading their 24Alison Bashford, “Deep Genetics: Universal History and the Species,” History and Theory 57, no.2 (2018): 313-314. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12065. 25“100 Best-Selling History Books of All Time,” BookAuthority, accessed February 25, 2022, https://bookauthority.org/books/best-selling-history-books. 26Xindi Wang, Burcu Yucesoy, Onur Varol, Tina Eliassi-Rad & Albert-László Barabási, “Success in books: predicting book sales before publication,” EPJ Data Science 8, no.31 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-019-0208-6. 27Greene, “Podcast.” 28Christopher Cwynar, “Self-service media: Public radio personalities, reality podcasting, and entrepreneurial culture,” Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture 17, no.4 (2019): 321. https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2019.1634811. 29Dom Tromans, “Casting into the Past” (Masters diss., University of Bristol, 2016): 5. https://doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2019.1634811 https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-019-0208-6 https://bookauthority.org/books/best-selling-history-books https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12065 8 thoughts into the digital ether, either can do so or already has. Notably, despite the freedom to produce whatever content a creator would like, one pronounced trend in recent years has been the popularization of long form content, often from academics or experts in various fields – a phenomenon that very much deviates from the widely established supposition of a shortening of attention span brought upon by “the affects of an increasingly digitalized lifestyle on the human mind.”30 Podcasts predominantly have come to be lengthy, sometimes multiple hour pieces of media. Consequently, a class of ‘public intellectuals,’ those who “offer representation by alterative voices in the dominant culture,”31 have become a mainstay of podcasting. This class of public intellectuals will be discussed at length later. Another medium with many similar qualities to podcasts are audiobooks. And, as there is significant crossover of both audience and creators between these and the topic of our discussion, it is worth taking a moment to detail their differences as well as the partially symbiotic relationship they have had throughout the past two decades.32 Podcasts and audiobooks share very similar technological elements in production and consumption. Both mediums are a form of digital audio that are able to be listened to, paused and experienced in much the same way. As well as this, they have experienced a concurrent increase in adoption and comparable growth over recent years.33 They do however, diverge in how and for what purpose they are created and published. While podcasts are a product of the new millennia, audiobooks official origins date back to the late 19th century,34 and it was with the 1931 Pratt-Smoot Act, which “provided federal funding https://www.academia.edu/27806498/CASTING_INTO_THE_PAST_Podcasting_as_a_medium_for _producing_works_of_history. 30Kalpathy Ramaiyer Subramanian, “Product Promotion in an Era of Shrinking Attention Span,” International Journal of Engineering and Management 7, no.2, (April, 2017): 85. 31Jim Scripps, “Podcasting and the Rise of the Public Intellectual: Viewing an Emergent Group of Media Personalities Through the Prism of Antonio Gramsci’s ‘The Intellectuals’,” (Masters diss., University of Nevada, 2020), 3. https://scholarworks.unr.edu/bitstream/handle/11714/7592/Scripps_unr_0139M_13274.pdf? sequence=1&isAllowed=y. 32Craig Wigginton, Duncan Stewart and Mark Casey, “The ears have it: The rise of audiobooks and podcasting,” Deloitte Insights, last modified December 9, 2019, https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/technology-media-and-telecom- predictions/2020/rise-of-audiobooks-podcast-industry.html. 33Amy Watson, “Share of adults who have read a book in any format in the last 12 months in the United States from 2011 to 2021, by format,” Statista, last modified January 13, 2022, https://www.statista.com/statistics/222754/book-format-used-by-readers-in-the-us/. 34Jennifer Moore and Maria Cahill, “A Sound History,” Children & Libraries: The Journal of the Association for Library Service to Children 15, no.1 (Spring 2017): 22. https://www.statista.com/statistics/222754/book-format-used-by-readers-in-the-us/ https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/technology-media-and-telecom-predictions/2020/rise-of-audiobooks-podcast-industry.html https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology/technology-media-and-telecom-predictions/2020/rise-of-audiobooks-podcast-industry.html https://scholarworks.unr.edu/bitstream/handle/11714/7592/Scripps_unr_0139M_13274.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://scholarworks.unr.edu/bitstream/handle/11714/7592/Scripps_unr_0139M_13274.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://www.academia.edu/27806498/CASTING_INTO_THE_PAST_Podcasting_as_a_medium_for_producing_works_of_history https://www.academia.edu/27806498/CASTING_INTO_THE_PAST_Podcasting_as_a_medium_for_producing_works_of_history 9 for recorded books for the blind,” that “audiobook production in the United States intensified.”35 Since which, the format has carved a niche market in Western countries’ bookstores. In the past decade however, this niche has expanded significantly. According to a recent study, twenty-three percent of American adults reported that they listened to an audiobook in the last twelve months compared to just eleven percent a decade before.36 This growth, while not as explosive, mirrors podcasting's development, and many creators have released audiobooks alongside or as an addition to their primary shows, or conversely, begun a podcast after writing and recording their audiobook.37 However, despite these intersects, there are three key differences between the mediums. The first is that audiobooks were and are, at their core, a conversion of an already published text to audio form; a text that has already seen extensive editing, rewriting and review, while podcasts tend more towards the more informal style of talk radio shows. The second, is that podcasts are typically released episodically with only a vague determination of progression towards a terminal ‘chapter,’ if there is intended to be any at all – akin to releasing a book chapter by chapter with no fixed terminus. In many cases, as will be discussed later, the audience themselves holds influence over the direction the podcast takes. And thirdly, podcasts are a platform that are not limited to monologues, with many featuring several individuals providing their perspectives in real-time; a feature that is unable to be replicated (at least in the sense of a real-time discussion) by audiobooks. It is however the case that both mediums lend themselves well to long form conversation; audiobooks provide a platform for the rigorous work of writers to reach a large audience, and podcasts provide a platform to engage with that audience more reactively. It is also necessary to consider the financial dimension of podcasting that has evolved alongside the medium. In its early days, skepticism around the future utility of the medium was common in the assertions of both researchers and companies. As late as 2007, podcasting was considered as “a niche prosumer activity, not as random listening or a passive feed”38 in the same sphere as digitalized music; in other words podcasting 35Ibid, 23. 36Andrew Perrin and Michelle Faverio, “Three-in-ten Americans now read e-books,” Pew Research Center, last modified January 6, 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/01/06/three-in- ten-americans-now-read-e-books/. 37Emily Polson, “10 Intersections between Podcasts, Audiobooks, and Storytelling at Large,” Bookriot, last modified August 2, 2019, https://bookriot.com/podcasts-audiobooks-storytelling/. 38Enrico Menduni, “Four steps in innovative radio broadcasting: from QuickTime to Podcasting,” The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media 5, no.1 (2007): 11. https://bookriot.com/podcasts-audiobooks-storytelling/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/01/06/three-in-ten-americans-now-read-e-books/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/01/06/three-in-ten-americans-now-read-e-books/ 10 was viewed as a temporary extension of radio broadcasting returning to its amateur roots with little profitability. However, as previous assumptions such as the idea that “both Digital radio broadcasting and Internet radio go against the winning trend of radio, namely its miniaturisation and its mobility”39 were overturned through advancements in accessibility, due in large part to Apple’s creation of its end-user interface and the increasingly ubiquitous use of smartphones, the medium saw a renewed interest from individuals and companies looking to monetize the space. Consequently, a wide variety of monetization strategies emerged. These strategies can be loosely divided under the two umbrellas of crowd-sourced consumer derived monetization and top down affiliate monetization. The former crowd-sourced approach includes methods such as the merchandising of related products, subscription based models on unaffiliated third-party websites, the direct selling of premium content, the payment gating of older episodes, interacting with fans in live shows involving paid comments such as YouTube's super-chats, as well as through direct donations via payment processors or cryptocurrencies. The latter, affiliate based monetization methods, are directly inherited from those that legacy technology typically employed. These often involve podcasters entering into contracts with third parties in return for compensation. Sponsorship in exchange for advertisement time and exclusive releases of a podcast to an affiliated website are the most apparent of these.4041 Many podcasters utilize several of these approaches to maximize their income. Often however, affiliate based income is limited to podcasts with larger audiences. Dan Carlin for example, has included the donation tagline, “for the cost of a cup of coffee” since the earliest days of his podcast. He has in the past partnered with the largest audiobook repository, Audible, as well as placing older episodes of his shows behind a relatively inexpensive paywall. Patrick Wyman has also received a sponsorship from Audible, and, for several years now, has had an exclusivity agreement with Wondery. Joe Rogan, mentioned above, who previously funded his show through personally presented advertisements at the beginning of each episode, signed an exclusivity agreement that commenced on https://doi.org/10.1386/rajo.5.1.9_1. 39Ibid, 6. 40“How Do Podcasts Make Money? Try These 20 Strategies to Monetize Your Show,” Castos, last modified October 7, 2021, https://castos.com/monetize-a-podcast/#:~:text=Sponsorship%20is %20the%20most%20common%20way%20to%20monetize%20a%20podcast.&text=Sponsorships %20pay%20more%20depending%20on,don't%20have%20many%20listeners. 41Jon Clark, “Eight Ways To Monetize Your Podcast,” Forbes, last modified August 5, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2021/08/05/eight-ways-to-monetize-your-podcast/? sh=2f5cd9953e68. https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2021/08/05/eight-ways-to-monetize-your-podcast/?sh=2f5cd9953e68 https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2021/08/05/eight-ways-to-monetize-your-podcast/?sh=2f5cd9953e68 https://castos.com/monetize-a-podcast/#:~:text=Sponsorship%20is%20the%20most%20common%20way%20to%20monetize%20a%20podcast.&text=Sponsorships%20pay%20more%20depending%20on,don't%20have%20many%20listeners https://castos.com/monetize-a-podcast/#:~:text=Sponsorship%20is%20the%20most%20common%20way%20to%20monetize%20a%20podcast.&text=Sponsorships%20pay%20more%20depending%20on,don't%20have%20many%20listeners https://castos.com/monetize-a-podcast/#:~:text=Sponsorship%20is%20the%20most%20common%20way%20to%20monetize%20a%20podcast.&text=Sponsorships%20pay%20more%20depending%20on,don't%20have%20many%20listeners https://doi.org/10.1386/rajo.5.1.9_1 11 September 1st 2020 with the publisher Spotify42 for a reported 100 million US dollars.43 Some of the potential consequences that these methods of monetization may have on the construction of history within the medium will be explored in the discussion of the democratization of history in the concluding chapter of this paper. At the end of his compilation on the writing of history from its conception as a subject to the present era, John Burrow commented that, “in the presentation of history, the chief new medium is obviously television… but it has been a mixed blessing, concentrating attention on the twentieth century and what news agencies, film makers and government propaganda thought worth recording.”44 He notes on the same page that “the internet now opens even greater possibilities for research, whose boundaries and implications we cannot yet see.” With each passing year however, it is becoming increasingly more clear that digital media’s boundaries are extremely broad, and that the process of displacing television from its role as the primary means with which individuals engage with the world outside of their immediate communities is well underway. Among the emergent technologies in this digital era, podcasting, and the advantages it provides in sharing and receiving information are also becoming more apparent. Listeners are able to remain au courant with little effort and can conveniently consume audio media as and when required (on subjects of their own choosing) through their smartphone or computer. The audio formatting of podcasts also relieves listeners from the burden of assiduous attention that consuming work in a visual format demands. Finally, as the technology continues to evolve, methods of monetization are also allowing for podcasting to become a legitimatized source of revenue for many individuals. For historians, this is another avenue through which to engage with the public – where exactly these types of shows fall into historiography is presented below. 42“Podcast Pioneer: ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ Launches Exclusive Partnership with Spotify,” Spotify, last modified May 19, 2020, https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-05-19/the-joe-rogan- experience-launches-exclusive-partnership-with-spotify/. 43Matt Flegenheimer, “Joe Rogan Is Too Big to Cancel,” New York Times, last modified September 1, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/business/joe-rogan.html. 44Burrow, A History of Histories, 517. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/business/joe-rogan.html https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-05-19/the-joe-rogan-experience-launches-exclusive-partnership-with-spotify/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-05-19/the-joe-rogan-experience-launches-exclusive-partnership-with-spotify/ 12 Chapter Two: Literature Review: How do historical podcasts fit into today’s historiography? Many of the earliest records of our history, dating from Herodotus and the Ancient Greeks, are found in oral traditions that, “transmitted in the form of tales, myths and legends, fairytales, songs, especially epic songs and poems, proverbs, riddles and other genres, form an important treasury of many a people's cultural heritage even today.”45 The transfer of historical experience through the spoken word has been a cornerstone of culture, community, and learning for thousands of years, far preceding the written word. From religious and political figures giving sermons on the state of the world, dissidents voicing their discontent, professors lecturing students, to parents instructing their children and those children articulating, experimenting and composing the world around them verbally, oral communication, and further, the oral tradition is thoroughly ingrained in human existence. The spoken word is naturally expressive, it conforms only to the limitations of the content, volume, tone and implicit meaning that the orator chooses to impose. It is also illocutionary, in that by “saying something, one not only says something but also does something.” By speaking it “changes a relationship either of the speaker to the world, or one part of the world to another, or of the world to the speaker.”46 Described by Madame de Staël in Corinne ou l’Italie, as she wrote on the transcendental power of the spoken voice of Corinne, her principal character and a muse, the spoken word goes beyond evoking both History and Literature: The accent, the look, the least gesture of an actor, truly inspired and influenced by genuine emotion, are a continual revelation of the human heart; and the ideal of the fine arts is always mingled with these revelations of nature. The harmony of the verse and the charm of the attitudes, lend to passion that grace and dignity which it often wants in reality. Thus every sentiment of the heart and every emotion of the soul, pass before the imagination without losing anything of their truth.47 45Walther Heissig and Rüdiger Schott, “The Present-Day Importance of Oral Traditions — Their Preservation, Publication and Indexing: Report on an International Workshop in St. Augustin near Bonn, Germany,” Abhandlungen der Nordrhein-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenchaften 102 (1998): 26. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-83676-2_2. 46White, The Practical Past, 34. 47 Madame de Staël, Corinne ou l’Italie Vol. 1 (London: J. M. Dent and Company, 1894), Ebook, book VII, chapter III, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16896/16896-h/16896-h.htm. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16896/16896-h/16896-h.htm https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-83676-2_2 13 Accordingly, it is clear that the voice is a versatile and powerful tool in expressing ideas about reality, and by extension, the past. However, despite the utility oral communication has had throughout history, despite it giving us our first recognized historian in Herodotus, who undoubtedly “used his ears, if only because most of the inscriptions he may have seen were in a script and language he could not read,”48 in recent years the predominance of oral presentation of academic history has been limited to the confines of small lecture halls for a handful of students and not made accessible to wider public audiences. The status that written history holds as the dominant form of historical discourse is unshakable; as, for a myriad of reasons, it likely will and should continue to be going forward. Published words on paper, unless revised and reprinted, are unchanging and concrete. They are able to be reread, reprinted, reinterpreted, referenced, critiqued, excerpted and so on in systematically reliable and universal ways. Written words also tend towards being more reflective than those of reactive extemporaneous speech. It is these traits that lend themselves well towards the methodological universality necessitated by scientific principles. However, while the traditional sciences, empiric disciplines within which the method is inextricable from clear and concrete conclusions, emerged with the scientific method as their foundation, for the discipline of history, it was the 19th century that marked its gradual establishment as, however embryonic, a more recognizably scientific pursuit in the academia. Drawing from the historical method formulated by French Benedictines of the seventeenth century,49 research methodology, standardized practices, and peer reviewing of historical work became an essential norm. At the same time, academic history diverged itself from the archaeological societies and antiquarian interests that some wealthy elites indulged in as collectors of the past, and discussion around theory of history itself, how history should be properly practiced, became a prominent presence in academia. The watershed for this in the English speaking world was the establishment of the English Historical Review in 1886 which was of considerable importance in “determining the ascendancy of professional university history.”50 This trend extended into the twentieth century, at which time – drawing from the ideas of the pragmatist philosophers in Friedrich 48Burrow, A History of Histories, 23. 49 G. J. Renier, History and its Purpose (New York: Routledge, 2015), 21. 50Philippa Levine, The Amateur and the Professional: Antiquarians, Historians and Archeologists in Victorian England, 1838-1886 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 164. 14 Wilhelm Nietzsche, Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Sandrys Peirce, William James, and John Dewey51 – post-modernism and the linguistic turn made explicit the significant questions around what it means to know the past, how it should be presented, and where history falls in the categorization of art and science. Historical podcasts, as the product of a technology that overturns many conventions separating the written and spoken word lends itself as another means as to how answers to these questions are considered, mimicking the concrete recorded nature of written text and positioning itself as a potential supplemental component of historical discourse. As the discussions of post-modern and post-structuralist thought are extensive, it is worthwhile to begin towards the end, with the theorists who, while influenced by the lists of contemporaries and predecessors, have integrated and expounded on them to be something of a temporary capstone in historical theory today. The final book of one of the most prominent critical theorists of the 21st century, Hayden White’s The Practical Past, which puts forth both a description of and argument for adoption of a utilitarian form of history that historians hereto have overlooked is one of those. White predicates his ideas on Michael Oakeshotts notion of a practical past, described as “the past that people as individuals or members of groups draw upon in order to make assessments and make decisions in ordinary everyday life as well as in extreme situations”52 and presented in opposition to the historical past, a purely literary construction of history for historians. White makes clear the chasm that exists between historians that practice history academically and public audiences, the latter of which is at this time the target demographic of historical podcasts. This divide is intrinsically linked with the purpose for which history is constructed. While “professional historians profess to be interested in primarily… ‘the historical past in itself’ alone, or in understanding the past on its own terms and resisting any inclination to draw inferences of a practical or utilitarian kind from the past to the present,”53 this is not typically the case for broader audiences who are concerned with that which relates immediately to how they perceive and understand the world around them. Incidentally, the idea of a practical past also allows for the revival of an element of 51Alireza Yousefy, Nooshin Forghani1 and Narges Keshtiaray, “A Critical Examination of Postmodernism Based on Religious and Moral Values Education,” International Education Studies 8, no.9 (2015): 99. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1074075.pdf. 52White, The Practical Past, preface XIIII. 53Ibid, preface XIIII. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1074075.pdf 15 history that has been expunged to a significant degree through the modernist movement while still remaining a perceived cornerstone of historical purpose by enthusiasts and general audiences today: that of ethical history. White states: The professionalization of historical studies required in principle at least that the past be studied, as it was said, “for itself alone” or as “a thing in itself,” without any ulterior motive other than a desire for the truth (of fact, to be sure, rather than doctrine) about the past and without any inclination to draw lessons from the study of the past and import them into the present in order to justify actions and programs for the future. In other words, history in its status as a science for the study of the past purported to purge the study of the past of any ethical content.54 This is however, impossible, as “although there may be methods of finding out ‘what happened’ there is no method whatsoever whereby one can definitely say what the ‘facts’ mean.”55 Considering this from a different angle, Primo Levi, a survivor of the Holocaust, following the preface to his memoir, comments of his time incarcerated in the Auschwitz Concentration camp that “it seems superfluous to add that none of the facts was invented.”56 As White points out, naturally, this draws our attention to the fact that some component of the recollection may have been constructed or fictionalized, although the extent to which we can never be clear. If then, we are open to the idea that even within direct recollection for “other things than the facts to have been invented” we must also admit therefore, that history, “is somewhat more or other than either fact or fiction.”57 It must educe itself to at least some degree from real events, but it can never escape the fetters of imagination, and this imaginative dimension inevitably reflects some form of moral framing relative to the individual. Even Collingwood, as a staunch modernist, could not escape this ethical dimension in his consideration of the purpose of history 70 years prior. In submitting that “it is generally thought to be of importance to man that he should know himself: where knowing himself means not knowing his personal peculiarities… but his nature,”58 he also incorporates an unmistakably philosophical component to a discipline that was at the time flirting with 54Ibid, 9. 55Keith Jenkins, Re-thinking History (Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004), 40. 56Primo Levi, “Se questo è un uomo,” Opere 1, edited by Marco Belpoliti (Roma: La Biblioteca di Repubblica- Espresso, 2009), 3, quoted in White, The Practical Past, 38. 57Ibid, 38. 58Collingwood, The Idea of History, 10. 16 objective, scientistic ideals. Returning to more contemporary historians, while White does not make the case for a dismantling of the historical past, he does impress the necessity to embrace a more relevant and pragmatic history for the general populace. This is expressed first through a repudiation of the notion that history can ever be true; that innate within any reconstruction of the past is fiction. A term by which he specifically means “a kind of invention or construction based on hypothesis rather than a manner of writing or thinking focused on purely imaginary or fantastic entities,”59 as no historian can ever bring the past into the present in its unadulterated entirety. Some level of interpretation must be applied to the past which will inevitably carry with it the shadow of the historian and further, that of the reader who is again interpreting the provided information through their own lens. History is not simply a fact gathering and affirming discipline. The component which gives the discipline its value “consists essentially of interpreting evidence”60 to reconstruct past events. To many, from the earliest of Greek historians, who sought to preserve what was ‘good,’ valuable, or edify lessons for future generations,61 to modern storytellers who render the past as a series of reminders on the fragility of civilization,62 deriving ethics from that interpretation is that value. Keith Jenkins, a fellow theorist and contemporary, continues White’s arguments and notes, that even if a historian were to have access to every fact of the past, the requisite methodological framework to confirm and select facts does not exist. He argues that truth “ultimately lies beyond method and evidence in ideology...talk of method as the road to truth is misleading. There is a range of methods without any agreed criteria for choosing.”63 Consequently, in place of the question “What is history?” historians would find themselves better situated if they asked “Who is history for?”64 Moreover, Jenkins continues, “if we do this then we can see that history is bound to be problematic because it is a contested term/discourse, meaning different things to different groups.”65 The framing of this question, like the former from which it is juxtaposed, has no concrete 59White, The Practical Past, preface XII. 60Collingwood, The Idea of History, 10. 61Burrow, A History of Histories, 11-58. 62Dan Carlin, The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses (London, Harper Collins Publishers, 2019). 63Jenkins, Re-thinking History, 18. 64Ibid, 22. 65Ibid, 22. 17 answer. Instead, and importantly, it necessitates each history to be considered in relation to the audience for which it was created. To the most devout of modernist historians, such a degree of relativism would likely be sacrilegious, however, the thought to abandon the pursuit of a methodologically correct and (to the extent that it is possible) objective history is not uncommon. Some, such as Elizabeth D. Ermath consider it to be the most natural way to consider the past. She remarks on the idea of individually contingent histories as such: “obviously I am concerned, in any case, only with the world as my point of view orientates it: I shall never know any other. The relative subjectivity of my sense of sight serves me precisely to define my situation in the world.”66 The idea of history as a compass to ones place in world, while articulated in this manner by Jenkins in 1991, was already apparent to a large degree in the rising awareness of the value of public history, and its establishment as a subset of history in the nineteen- seventies as historians recognized opportunities to officially expand the purview of the discipline to the wider world. The term, defined by Robert Kelley in 1978, in its barest sense referred to the “employment of historians and the historical method outside of academia: in government, private corporations, the media, historical societies and museums, [and] even in private practice.”67 Through decades of academic review and the practical implementation of public historians in wider society, it has been noted that, “the phrase ‘and the historical method’ soon disappeared from what became the fallback definition of public history,”68 causing the application of the term to extend to a much broader demographic. Compounding this reduction in the definitional boundaries, with the rise of the internet the requisite of employment, although typically still implied, is also often no longer applicable, for as noted previously, financial barriers in the creation of public history have in some areas all but dissolved. Public history is the face of history to the majority of individuals in the Western world. Yet, despite its now forty year history as a clarified subset of historical practice, the field 66Elizabeth E. Ermarth, Sequel to History: Postmodernism and the Crisis of Representational Time, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992), 148. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv15r58bv. 67Robert Kelley, “Public History: Its Origins, Nature, and Prospects,” The Public Historian 1, no.1 (October 1, 1978): 16. https://doi.org/10.2307/3377666. 68Rebecca Conard, “Complicating Origin Stories: The Making of Public History into an Academic Field in the United States,” in A Companion to Public History edited by David M. Dean (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2018), 19. https://doi.org/10.2307/3377666 https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv15r58bv 18 of active public historians is small. In a short paper on the subject from 2020, Jock Phillips estimated that within New Zealand there are only “a total of 170-180 [gainfully employed] public historians in the country.”69 One of the causes of this, J.M Winter argues, is that public histories “collective character stops many people from going into it,”70 as this type of research inevitably curtails the authorial voice historians. For projects at the scale expected in many expressions of public history require more than one contributor, and, as the “fundamental ethos of the historical profession is individualistic”71 there are sometimes difficulties in finding professional historians willing to take part. While likely accurate, this figure is clearly disparate in consideration of the extent of the history with which the public actually engages. Museums, cinema, games, television shows, historical sites, public holidays, and of course podcasts are all expressions of public history. In many cases however, these are produced or maintained by amateurs, or gainfully employed professionals who would be considered, or who consider themselves to be something other than historians. Today, history podcasts by themselves are a mainstay of public discourse to such a degree that they arguably have more influence on the daily lives of many citizens of Western countries, especially those who have grown up in an online world, than academic work on the same subjects do. Moreover, a corollary of the technology is that individuals can produce comprehensive and widely accessible public histories without relinquishing the authorial role. As the development of the internet has allowed for quick and reliable transfers of large amounts of data, the potential to produce and communicate public history has correspondingly increased. Yet, conspicuous in its absence is the attention academic historians have given the creators of these podcasts. In some regards, the exchange of information through podcasting embodies many of the speculations that academics of the 1990’s put forth regarding the Internet’s future utility. In Highway Of Dreams, written by now Professor Emeritus of Communications at the Annenberg School for Communication, Michael Noll envisaged that as the technology of the internet developed, the “world's knowledge will be instantly accessible from computer terminals over a packet-switched public data network that is friendly and easy 69Jock Phillips, “The University and Public History,” New Zealand Journal of History 54, no.1 (2020): 113. https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/login.aspx? direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=azh&AN=143017744&site=ehost-live&scope=site. 70J. M. Winter, “Public History and Historical Scholarship,” History Workshop Journal, no.42 (Autumn, 1996): 169. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4289472. 71Ibid, 169. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4289472 https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=azh&AN=143017744&site=ehost-live&scope=site https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=azh&AN=143017744&site=ehost-live&scope=site 19 to use. Students will do their library research without ever going to a library. Books will all be stored at central data banks in a digital format and will be accessible over the telecommunication superhighway.”72 While he makes clear that this was intended as a hyperbole,73 a utopian view of free exchange of information through the web was a subject on the minds those who witnessed its rise. This has not happened of course. As many identified early, the free transfer of all information is a utopia in concept only;74 for one, any who derive their income from the creation of this information would likely object if it was actually put into practice. The internet does however, proliferate information at an ever-increasing pace to a far broader audience than historians of the past had access. Podcasting is, admittedly, simply a new vehicle of public history, but it is one whose availability allows for easier, more straight-forward consumption than public histories until now.75 Moreover, the medium’s technical elements overturn many outdated assumptions about public history. The idea, for example, that “public history is publicly-funded history” and as such “no one else will pay the sums needed for public history projects: museums, exhibitions, television productions,”76 has been made largely redundant in the online space. While only a product of recent years, as a consequence of payment platforms and crowd sourcing of income, creating public history has become a viable career. In this sense perhaps, podcasts have led to a new paradigm for public history, and one that may more closely resemble the dreams of past academics than they would have reasonably expected. Outside of the historical scholarship, other disciplines within the humanities have paid comparatively more attention the digitization of communication in recent years; the field of teaching is particularly given to exploring new technology. As a consequence of the corona pandemic of 2020, research into this will also likely continue to accelerate in the coming years. In teacher of creative media and digital culture at Washington State University, John F. Barbers’ paper, “Digital storytelling: New opportunities for humanities scholarship and pedagogy”77 he outlines several technologies at the 72Michael Noll, Highway of Dreams A Critical View Along the Information Superhighway (New York: Routledge, 2014), 7. 73Ibid, 5. 74John Carlo Bertot and Patricia Diamond Fletcher, World Libraries on the Information Superhighway: Preparing for the Challenges of the New Millennium (Hershey: IGI Global, 2000). 75Tromans, “Casting into the Past,” 18. 76Winter, “Public History and Historical Scholarship,” 170. 77Barber, “Digital storytelling,” 3. 20 vanguard of information circulation in the digital world, including podcasts. Beginning with playwright David Mamet’s assertion that drama, or storytelling, is the nature of perception and, “that it is a human need to construct, or have constructed for us, narratives about our lives that “order the universe into a comprehensible form,” a cause and effect conclusion,” Barbers explores the extent to which new media is and could be utilized to exert influence on today's culture. Podcasts, interactive narratives, multimedia works, games and trans-media approaches to teaching, sharing and creating culture have re-invigorated oral and aural storytelling as well as allow for us to “uncover and organize forgotten historical and cultural information into meaningful personal narratives about a place, a time and people.”78 Again, that podcasting currently has an established place in today’s cultural discourse and will likely become increasingly more important in the future is a growing sentiment in other disciplines. The discipline of history, by having the ability to integrate narrative into its work so frictionlessly, is well positioned to take advantage of this. Interestingly, historians are not entirely unaware of this fact either, however there is a noticeable overall failure to keep up with new popularized technology despite the elevation of older public mediums. Historians embrace, for example, a culture of cinematic review. The discourse around cinema as a medium for history is extremely comprehensive, some considering the disciplines of film and history as those in a “parallel orbit”.79 When public history is mentioned, it is likely that cinema would be among the first expressions of it to come to mind. Newer mediums have seen comparatively less attention despite the similarities with which they can present history; historical video games,80 audiobooks and podcasts being perhaps the three most apparent. This is, of course, a result of the role that cinema has had historically in acting as an agent of the past, recreating, interpreting, and presenting it on-screen to audiences through a variety of styles and genres. Cinematic history has been the at the vanguard of popular history as a form of cultural exploration and expression, as well as harnessed as a means of propaganda. Today however, as evidenced by the engagement online, this 78Ibid, 6. 79Eleftheria Thanouli, History and Film: A Tale of Two Disciplines (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 1-20. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=nlebk&AN=1881487&site=eds-live&scope=site. 80Cyril Brom,Lukáš Kolek, Patrícia Martinková and Vít Šisler, “Can video games change attitudes towards history? Results from a laboratory experiment measuring short and long-term effects,” Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (August, 2021). https://doi-org.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/10.1111/jcal.12575. https://doi-org.ezproxy.massey.ac.nz/10.1111/jcal.12575 https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=nlebk&AN=1881487&site=eds-live&scope=site https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=nlebk&AN=1881487&site=eds-live&scope=site 21 dominance is at least in part giving way to new media. For example, Alexander Sokurov’s somewhat well-known 2002 film Russian Ark received “150 user responses on Rotten Tomatoes, 164 on IMDB, and about 40 on Metacritic” as well as engagement on Twitter and 397 ratings on Amazon at the time of writing, many being lengthy reviews by “participants seeking undertake cultural work”81 in exploring the films construction and messaging. These responses were explored in some depth by Jerome De Goot in Consuming History.82 Most notably, the film also received several entries into academic journals, with historians as well writing on the films cultural impact.838485 Comparatively however, The History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan has received close to ten thousand ratings on the Apple Podcasts website,86 and his related audiobook The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic87 had had over two thousand reviews by February 22, 2022, yet only a single academic article is directly concerned with the contents of this work.88 This single comparison is not an argument to prove that there is an inequity in the relative importance that historians confer to cinema over other mediums so much as it is an example to highlight a fact that is apparent already. The relationship that history has with cinema is well established, 81Jerome De Goot, Consuming History: Historians and heritage in contemporary popular culture (New York: Routledge, 2016), 55. 82Ibid, 55-57. 83George Sikharulidze, “Rethinking Russian Ark,” Film International (Enskede, Sweden) 10, no.4 (October, 2012): 101–108. doi:10.1386/fint.10.4-5.101_1. 84Tim Harte, “A Visit to the Museum: Aleksandr Sokurov’s ‘Russian Ark’ and the Framing of the Eternal,” Slavic Review 64, no.1 (2005): 43–58. doi:10.2307/3650066. 85Yana Hashamova, “Two Visions of a Usable Past in (Op)Position to the West: Mikhalkov’s The Barber of Siberia and Sokurov’s Russian Ark,” The Russian Review 65, no.2 (2006): 250–66. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.3664400&site=eds- live&scope=site. 86“The History of Rome: Customer Reviews,” Apple, accessed 22 February, 2022, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-history-of-rome/id261654474. See Appendix 2 for screen capture at time of viewing. 87“The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic Audible Audiobook – Unabridged,” Amazon, accessed 22 February, 2022, https://www.amazon.com/The- Storm-Before-Storm-audiobook/dp/B0747X8KKT/ref=sr_1_2? crid=UFTHBQE6XGW1&keywords=mike+duncan+history+of+rome+podcast&qid=1644821342& sprefix=mike+duncan+history+of+rome+podcast%2Caps%2C291&sr=8-2. See Appendix 3 for screen capture at time of viewing. 88Benjamin J. Dueholm, “Lessons from Revolutions: The Relevance of Mike Duncan’s History Podcast,” The Christian Century 138, no.17 (August 25, 2021): 30–33. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=reh&AN=ATLAiREM210930000590&site=eds- live&scope=site. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=reh&AN=ATLAiREM210930000590&site=eds-live&scope=site https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=reh&AN=ATLAiREM210930000590&site=eds-live&scope=site https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=reh&AN=ATLAiREM210930000590&site=eds-live&scope=site https://www.amazon.com/The-Storm-Before-Storm-audiobook/dp/B0747X8KKT/ref=sr_1_2?crid=UFTHBQE6XGW1&keywords=mike+duncan+history+of+rome+podcast&qid=1644821342&sprefix=mike+duncan+history+of+rome+podcast%2Caps%2C291&sr=8-2 https://www.amazon.com/The-Storm-Before-Storm-audiobook/dp/B0747X8KKT/ref=sr_1_2?crid=UFTHBQE6XGW1&keywords=mike+duncan+history+of+rome+podcast&qid=1644821342&sprefix=mike+duncan+history+of+rome+podcast%2Caps%2C291&sr=8-2 https://www.amazon.com/The-Storm-Before-Storm-audiobook/dp/B0747X8KKT/ref=sr_1_2?crid=UFTHBQE6XGW1&keywords=mike+duncan+history+of+rome+podcast&qid=1644821342&sprefix=mike+duncan+history+of+rome+podcast%2Caps%2C291&sr=8-2 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-history-of-rome/id261654474 https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.3664400&site=eds-live&scope=site https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.3664400&site=eds-live&scope=site https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cookie,url,uid&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.3664400&site=eds-live&scope=site 22 however as other mediums of cultural expression have gained popularity, the appreciation that historians show to cinema has not been concomitantly replicated. While it is the case that discourse on podcasting within the historical scholarship is rare, an attempt has been made to address whether podcasting is “a new way of presenting the same information”, or “a fundamental shift in engagement” with historical material in graduate student Dom Tromans’ 2016 dissertation.89 He argues, naturally, for the latter, and identifies various aspects of podcasts that not only impact how information is presented to the public, but how that public selects for, understands and consumes it. Most notably, Tromans takes pains to identify those facets of podcasting’s utility that are not mirrored by the written word, such as allowing the listener a “passive rather than active consumption,”90 or that aural communication can, in cases, communicate more “layers of meaning”91 than text; the dramatic, performative nature that is inseparable from the spoken word. Tromans also discusses the efforts, or lack thereof, to digitally store audio as a pedagogical tool in top universities throughout the United Kingdom, despite many years of recorded lectures and access to the technology. While he notes, American universities seem to be comparatively better in this regard, it is still clear that the true value of this resource is not being exploited in academia’s history departments. Any student who attended university during the restrictions adopted in response to the novel corona virus will attest to the convenience of re-watchable lectures. Consequently, Tromans’ paper highlights the extent to which the technology could be utilized as a new tool for education and expression if academia took a proactive approach to embrace the technology – a point that will be reinforced throughout this paper. What he provides little analysis on however, and Tromans himself laments this in his preface, is the contents of historical podcasts and how independent historical podcasters go about constructing and presenting their information. In part, it is that void which the following will attempt to fill, as podcasts, while undoubtedly a useful tool in historical education, are also effectively expanding the frontier of public history in very different ways. The discipline of history is a product of artistic and philosophical components as much as from the pursuit of a scientific methodology that is so ubiquitous and valued 89Tromans, “Casting into the Past,” 9. 90Ibid, 46. 91Ibid, 14. 23 throughout academia.92 And post-modern literature reappraising the discipline suggests that the transition from modern to post-modern histories is epochal and incompatible with any scientific method of history. As such, history today is far more varied in its exposition, and it is necessary as well as inevitable for history to be “interminably open to new and disobedient approaches.”93 Prophetically it seems, new technologies have done exactly that, with cinema, games and of course podcasts contrasting with academia's traditional approaches to exploring the past. Yet, while public history has become much more widely discussed in the past decades, there are still gaps in the historical literature on how and through which mediums these new histories are being presented. The extent to which historical information is communicated through the internet is simultaneously understood yet underutilized, despite, perhaps, it now achieving as close as we may ever come to the ideals of a publicly utilized information superhighway. New technology through which individuals throughout the world can connect, discuss, and understand the past in new ways. Podcasting is in large part a culmination of all of these discussions. It draws, somewhat ironically, from both the very new and very old. The medium of podcasting allows for the expression of public history through a combination of those oral traditions that have been intimately tied with society since prehistory and technology that was in its incipiency barely two decades ago. The following two sections will explore in depth exemplars of historical podcasters and how they approach the presentation of history. While these two individuals are not by any means exhaustive of the different styles of historical podcasting, each is unique to such a degree that they do represent a variety of that which the medium can achieve and contribute to modern historiography. The first, Dan Carlin, from the perspective of ‘amateur’ history, and the second, Patrick Wyman, as one of the rare examples of academic historians engaging in the space. 92White, Metahistory, preface X-XI. 93Keith Jenkins, New Thoughts on an Old Discipline: Refiguring History (London: Routledge, 2003), abstract. 24 Chapter Three: Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History” Dan Carlin’s entry into podcasting coincided with the development of mass online communication that is now an integral part of information exchange today. This chapter primarily discusses Carlin’s development as an oral historian throughout his career as a podcaster and what his success tells us about the influence of podcasting as a means of communicating public history. In the early 2000’s, social media had begun to establish a notable presence in the online world, quickly proliferating throughout the young, technically literate generation. The social networking website MySpace for example, had approximately 54 million users in 2006 and even surpassed Google’s total visitors for a brief period the same year.94 Facebook, founded in 2004, saw parabolic growth as the decade came to a close, with its user base expanding from 100 million in 2008 to 517 million two years later.95 While comparatively obscure, podcasting was another emergent technology of communication burgeoning amidst many in the post-tech bubble space. An ever-growing catalogue of niche shows had introduced podcasting to the public dialogue to such an extent that ‘podcast’ was even coined word of the year by New Oxford American Dictionary in 2005.96 From shows centered on current events, self-improvement, science, games, celebrities, music, comedy, fitness, health and nutrition, to abstract topics such as love, as the decade progressed, for every interest a person had, a podcast was created to discuss it at length.97 Today, if you were to disregard quality and engagement, a cursory glance at any large podcasting directory will display many thousands of podcasts of listed under the genre 94Pete Cashmore, “MySpace, America's Number One,” Mashable, last modified July 11, 2006, https://mashable.com/archive/myspace-americas-number-one. 95“Number of people using social media platforms, 2004 to 2010,” Our World in Data, accessed November 3, 2021, https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/users-by-social-media-platform? time=2004..2010&country=Facebook~Instagram~MySpace~Pinterest~Reddit~Snapchat~TikTok~Tu mblr~Twitter~WeChat~Whatsapp~YouTube. 96Oliver Skinner, “The Complete History of Podcasts,” Voices, last modified July 21, 2020, https://www.voices.com/blog/history-of-podcasts/. 97Miranda Sawyer, “The 10 best lesser-known podcasts,” The Guardian, last modified January 18, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2014/jan/18/10-best-lesser-known-podcasts- miranda-sawyer. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2014/jan/18/10-best-lesser-known-podcasts-miranda-sawyer https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2014/jan/18/10-best-lesser-known-podcasts-miranda-sawyer https://www.voices.com/blog/history-of-podcasts/ https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/users-by-social-media-platform?time=2004..2010&country=Facebook~Instagram~MySpace~Pinterest~Reddit~Snapchat~TikTok~Tumblr~Twitter~WeChat~Whatsapp~YouTube https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/users-by-social-media-platform?time=2004..2010&country=Facebook~Instagram~MySpace~Pinterest~Reddit~Snapchat~TikTok~Tumblr~Twitter~WeChat~Whatsapp~YouTube https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/users-by-social-media-platform?time=2004..2010&country=Facebook~Instagram~MySpace~Pinterest~Reddit~Snapchat~TikTok~Tumblr~Twitter~WeChat~Whatsapp~YouTube https://mashable.com/archive/myspace-americas-number-one 25 of history. Consolidating this into those that see significant exposure would still leave hundreds of notable historical podcasts in the English language alone. Less than two decades ago however, a similar search would have been met with extremely limited results – ‘history’ perhaps being considered a rather incongruous word on the frontiers of new technology. Dan Carlin, the host of Common Sense, Hardcore History and its spin-off Hardcore History: Addendum,98 and recent author of The End Is Always Near, was among those who first filled the vacuum. Carlin appeared in the podcasting space in 2005 with a political commentary and current events show Common Sense (a name which conveys the moderate and pragmatic approach with which the show attempts to explore contemporary issues), leveraging his experience as a radio host and journalist to produce quality online content with greater liberty to express his personal perspectives and creative style than in his previous occupation.99 Like many early adopters, Carlin recognized potential in the utility provided by the internet to reach a large and very different audience to regular broadcasting networks, as well as the freedom yielded to the creator in choosing what to discuss and how to discuss it. Having dealt with amateur content throughout the 1990’s and facing difficulties finding co-operative financiers to invest in a similar venture, podcasting presented an opportunity to pursue what he saw as an imminent extension of modern media.100 Currently, after seventeen years of publication, Common Sense has 322 installments, with the episodes fifty through to 322 being accessible and widely popular to this day.101 Carlin entered into podcasting on the cusp of a period of parabolic industry growth yet before an overcrowding of the space, and this timing may have in part contributed to Common Sense’s early success. Regardless, it proved that the potential Carlin perceived in the technology could be actualized into a worthwhile pursuit, and less than a year after his debut, on July 27, 2006, he ventured outside the domain of contemporary political commentary and into 98Dan Carlin, “Hardcore History: Addendum,” pilot episode released October 19, 2017, podcast, website, https://www.dancarlin.com/addendum/. 99Alex V. Cipolle, “Q&A With Hardocre History’s Dan Carlin Print Edition,” Eugene Weekly, last modified December 24, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20180127025222/http://www.eugeneweekly.com/20141224/culture/qa- hardcore-history%E2%80%99s-dan-carlin. Carlin worked as a TV reporter, columnist and radio host during the late 1980’s and 90’s. His coverage of the 1992 LA Riots is mentioned frequently in news articles, and on occasion by himself, however copies of the original columns are unable to be sourced. 100Zachary Davis, “A Hardcore Conversation With Hardcore History's Dan Carlin at Harvard's Sound Education 2018,” Sound Education, July 28th, 2019, YouTube video, website, 14:10, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1obLWK4vjg. 101Dan Carlin, “Common Sense With Dan Carlin,” pilot episode released 2005, podcast, website, https://www.dancarlin.com/product-category/common-sense-with-dan-carlin/. https://www.dancarlin.com/product-category/common-sense-with-dan-carlin/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1obLWK4vjg https://web.archive.org/web/20180127025222/http://www.eugeneweekly.com/20141224/culture/qa-hardcore-history%E2%80%99s-dan-carlin https://web.archive.org/web/20180127025222/http://www.eugeneweekly.com/20141224/culture/qa-hardcore-history%E2%80%99s-dan-carlin https://www.dancarlin.com/addendum/ 26 the field of history, releasing what is now one of the most recognized podcasts of all time, Hardcore History. Like Common Sense, Hardcore History quickly gained a cult following and saw positive responses almost ubiquitously throughout media. Among its accolades, the show was ranked fifth best podcast of all time by Slate Magazine in 2014,102 and won the Podcast Awards’ ‘Best Educational Podcast’ in 2015.103 Today, Hardcore History boasts 67 episodes and over 143 hours of cumulative listening time.104 While as a consequence of the nature of the mediums decentralized distribution and privately owned statistics, exact data is impossible to find, according to the New York Times, Blueprint for Armageddon VI, released May, 2015, reached more than 351,000 downloads within 24 hours of its release. Since that time the audience size has only grown,105 and conservative speculation alongside a gathering of what little data is available publicly would suggest that today each episode has accumulated at least millions, if not tens of millions of views. Again, a number that will only increase going forward. In addition, Carlin’s cognizance of the changing media landscape and his drive to constantly adapt and improve has contributed to his success. He engages dynamically with both audience and technology to remain relevant. This has garnered him considerable prestige over the last seventeen years and Dan Carlin now exists as a staple of the podcasting industry; with Hardcore History in particular holding seminal status in its genre. Carlin’s appearances outside of his own shows (which will be discussed later) attest to this. In spite of the shows accolades, initially Carlin intended the show simply as a way to tell stories about the historical occurrences he had a personal interest in without the constraints of traditional broadcasting. In particular, he was intent on utilizing 102David Haglund and Rebecca Onion, “The 25 Best Podcast Episodes Ever,” Slate, last modified December 14th, 2014, http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/ten_years_in_your_ears/2014/12/ best_podcast_episodes_ever_the_25_best_from_serial_to_the_ricky_gervais.html. 103“Past Winners,” Podcast Awards, accessed October 20, 2021, https://www.podcastawards.com/past-winners. 104See Appendix 4. The cumulative total has been calculated based on the catalogue of podcasts available as of October 25, 2021. For an updated catalogue see https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore- history-series/. 105Dave Itzkoff, “Obama Sets Download Record for Maron Podcast,” New York Times, last modified June 23, 2014, http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/obama-interview-sets- download-record-for-maron-podcast/?_r=0. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/obama-interview-sets-download-record-for-maron-podcast/?_r=0 http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/obama-interview-sets-download-record-for-maron-podcast/?_r=0 https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/ https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/ https://www.podcastawards.com/past-winners http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/ten_years_in_your_ears/2014/12/best_podcast_episodes_ever_the_25_best_from_serial_to_the_ricky_gervais.html http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/ten_years_in_your_ears/2014/12/best_podcast_episodes_ever_the_25_best_from_serial_to_the_ricky_gervais.html 27 podcasting’s ‘white space’ to reflect as he wanted on any given topic.106 The show was aimed at like-minded individuals, and commenced, Carlin states, “under the assumption that if you’re listening you already know the history, and so, all I did was have the conversations you used to have as a history major with your other history majors.”107 The pilot episode, Alexander vs Hitler,108 a comparative discussion of modern societal perception of Alexander the Great and Adolf Hitler centered on the question: ‘Who was worse?’ embodies this pursuit. The episode falls between lecture and conversation, with listeners expected to earnestly consider some of the questions that Carlin raises, while for others, an anticipated response leads the ‘conversation’ forwards. He explores the warping that occurs through relativity bias, cultural predisposition and historical review and asks the audience to consider for themselves through which lenses they view certain characters in history, in a manner similar to a teacher guiding their students. Alexander he argued, has been romanticized to heroic status through much of history. He was spoken of Whiggishly by civilizations in times when their own territories were expanding; the Romans during Pax Romana or the colonial nations throughout the early modern era; yet was despised by civilizations in periods of expansions of civil liberties.109 However, as much as we discuss Alexander’s governorship or the military conquests themselves, historians are inevitably drawn to the mythology that has developed around his life. The progenitorial example, as recorded by Plutarch, is that upon meeting Diogenes, Alexander, “admired so much the haughtiness and grandeur of the man who had nothing but scorn for him, that he said to his followers, who were laughing and jesting about the philosopher as they went away, ‘But verily, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.’”110 Yet, it is a fact that he was Alexander, the King of Kings, and the hand will remain iron regardless of how much velvet history would wrap it with. Hitler comparatively, Carlin asserts, has transitioned from the label of a lunatic to something of an evil genius, and it is rare to find any historical literature concerning him that is not framed by a condemnation of his actions and beliefs.111 The episode concludes by proffering several questions: are there not similarities in the atrocities that 106Brian Rose, “Dan Carlin – Hardcore History – Part 1/2,” London Real, last modified December 18th, 2020, YouTube Video, 29:31, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMXlgKHWoSU. 107Ibid, 30:33. 108Dan Carlin, “Alexander vs. Hitler,” Hardcore History, July 26, 2006, podcast, website, https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-1-alexander-versus-hitler/. 109Carlin, “Alexander vs. Hitler,” 3:39. 110Plutarch, Lives Volume VII: Demosthenes and Cicero. Alexander and Caesar trans. Bernadotte Perrin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1919), 261. 111Carlin, “Alexander vs. Hitler,” 9:34. https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-1-alexander-versus-hitler/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMXlgKHWoSU 28 these two men committed? If one were to introduce someone ignorant of the 20th century to these two individuals – withholding the abundance of photos, video and war memorabilia – which would they consider to be the more vicious or cruel? In another twenty-five hundred years, will people view Hitler with the detachment in which we examine Alexander today? The contents of the episode are stimulating, and Carlin's cavalier approach to historical discussion confer both a freedom to his work and an accessibility to the audience which is not shared by academic texts; a fact of which Carlin is very aware. For instance, even if one were to ignore the methodological criticisms that could be levied at the comparison drawn between these two figures, to propose the moral comparison itself could be construed as extremely provocative. It is something that could be “rejected as being not only a misrepresentation of reality but… a violation of the victims’ [of the Holocaust] moral right to a true and accurate account of what they had experienced,”112 and as such shouldn’t be asked, and almost certainly wouldn’t be asked by a licensed historian.113 For the audience however, Hardcore History’s unorthodox approach to exploring history compels them to engage with the material. Carlin often monologues briefly on theoretical alternative histories (counter-factual histories), that are fascinating to the listener, but from which it is impossible to draw a cohesive argument with a substantive conclusion about the past. Stylistically, this is a defining element of the show, and it frequently recurs throughout. In almost all episodes, Carlin presents subjects in some variation of ‘what if’ questions. Sometimes these serve as a platform for short digressions into tangential but interesting thoughts, in other cases they serve as the inspiration for shorter episodes in their entirety. (Blitz) History Under the Influence, for example, questions how the abuse of alcohol or drugs could have changed the outcome of significant occurrences throughout history, and Carlin expects his audience to apply their own understandings of such impairments to imagine how different history could have been were it not for, ill-timed or ill-considered, consumption of recreational 112White, The Practical Past, 26. 113White, “Truth and Circumstance: What (if Anything) Can Properly Be Said about the Holocaust?” in The Practical Past, 28. An example of this can be found in the chapter “Truth and Circumstance,” wherein White considers the ethical obligations historians may have in conceptualizing the Holocaust in relation to its victims as an event with such “moral weight and ontological substance.” What questions historians should ask, as well as how the findings of these conclusions should be presented is in area of ongoing debate. 29 drugs.114 What if Hermann Wilhelm Göring, commander of Hitlers’ Jagdgeschwader I, was not reliant on morphine?115 Would Winston Churchill still have been Churchill without his excessive consumption of alcohol? A later show, (Blitz) Old School Toughness, is concerned with how the nature of a people’s grit could have had an impact on the past; what could have happened if society was composed of weak people during the world wars116 and how would our society today cope with such events? (Blitz) Suffer the Children derives its inspiration from DeMausian psycho-history, a field that has seen its share of skepticism,117 and contemplates, aware of the anachronism, how widespread child abuse and parenting practices in earlier eras could explain some of history’s brutality. Comparing this to Western society’s values around raising children today, he wonders not only if the raising of children in this way led to what we now consider as atrocities of the past, but how our society and our practices could be viewed by future generations.118 Carlin often asks the questions academic historians are unwilling or unable to ask. Each episode of his show is musing in nature, with the concrete elements of the past serving as a locus for reflection on the circumstances of today. However, each show also raises questions that not only do we not know the answer to, but we, almost assuredly, cannot know the answers to. They are questions that will perpetually remain stranded in speculation, questions that make for excellent conversation pieces with new perspectives from which to consider the past, but do not fit well into academic discourse. Often, in the modern discipline of history, the terms ‘philosophical’ or ‘theoretical’ convey a critique. To assess the ‘was’ in history is, for the most part, firmer ground to stand on than what ‘could have been’ when piecing together the events that led to today. In the case of Hardcore History however, Carlin’s less forensic approach serves as an asset to the show rather than a negative. By smoothing over the complexities of specifics, and not relying entirely on dense, rigorous arguments he creates a digestible 114Dan Carlin, “(Blitz) History Under the Influence,” Hardcore History, May 6, 2008, podcast, website, https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-20-blitz-history-under-the-influence/. 115Leonard Mosley, The Reich Marshal: A Biography of Hermann Goering (New York City: Doubleday, 1974), 104. 116Dan Carlin, “(Blitz) Old School Toughness,” Hardcore History, April 27, 2010, podcast, website, https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-33-blitz-old-school-toughness/. 117Hans Jürgen Eysenck, Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (New York: Routledge, 2017). See Chapter 7 “Psycho-Babble and Pseudo-History,” 171-192 for an overview of the criticism leveled at the discipline. 118Dan Carlin, “(Blitz) Suffer the Children,” Hardcore History, December 9, 2009, podcast, website, https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-31-blitz-suffer-the-children/. https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-31-blitz-suffer-the-children/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-33-blitz-old-school-toughness/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-20-blitz-history-under-the-influence/ 30 slice of historical knowledge wrapped in compelling ideas and questions. Consequently, Hardcore History contributes to modern historical discourse, at least in the public sphere, in at least two respects. First, it encourages public engagement in thinking about history by closely tying it in a clear manner to the audience and their lives today, reifying history as the listener attempts to compare their own experiences to those of people of the past. Second, it disregards a convention of modern historical discourse that is imposing to those without formal training: it challenges the style of questions that are typically asked by favoring the discussion of the topic itself over the pursuit of conclusion. While history is, as David Hackett Fischer defined, “a problem solving discipline,”119 a problem proffered does not necessarily need to be resolved for it to be useful – in this case, it is the audiences own consideration of historical questions that renders it such. A professor of media studies, Andrew J. Salvati writes that what Carlin practices is “history as a form of oral storytelling.” That, as “a kind of modern day Herodotus – Carlin constructs an experience of the past that is guided both by traditional historiographical tools (primary and secondary sources), and also by a sense of empathy for the people within the stories who ‘were raised with such different cultures influences, such different expectations than we were,’ but with whom we nevertheless share ‘our humanness.’”120 According to Carlin, this subtle transformation from musing theorist to historical storyteller was in large part due to responses from the audience – a democratizing element of the podcasting space which will be explored in more depth later. While, in early episodes of Hardcore History he would largely speculate over small slices of history that were of interest to him, the audience would then express their desire for context – reaching out through comments or email and requesting the background for each topic.121 Consequently, later episodes expanded to include more extensive historical information regarding occurrences and people of the past, and shifted from amusing diversions to a more comprehensive historical purview. The evolution towards a more comprehensive historical narrative took place gradually however, with shows extending to roughly one hour in length from 2006 to 2008. For comparison, from the 2006 pilot episodes sixteen minute runtime, in July of 2008 he 119David Hackett Fischer, Historians Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), Introduction XV. 120Andrew J. Salvati, “Podcasting the Past: Hardcore History, Fandom and DIY Histories,” Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22, no.2 (2015): 237. https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2015.1083375. 121Rose, “Dan Carlin – Hardcore history – Part 1/2,” 30:50. https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2015.1083375 31 released his first three part series, Punic Nightmares I,122 regarding the Roman and Carthaginian conflicts, which when totaled, add to more than three and a half hours and reference twenty-five separate historical texts. As of 2021, his most recent work, a chronicle of the Japanese experience through the Second World War, Supernova in the East,123 surpasses twenty-six and a half hours in length and refers to eighty-six historical texts, several of which were written by those party to the events.124 Carlin believed originally that audiences would not enjoy the lengthier episodes, and again, credits their feedback with the change in length, remarking that a common response to his belief that nobody wants to sit down and listen for 60 minutes was simply a feature of the medium: “we have pause buttons.”125 Carlin’s most recent show, Supernova in the East is the result of Hardcore History’s style and pursuit having developed over 15 years. It exemplifies what is arguably most valuable about Carlin’s current