Sounds and Furies: The Evolution of Historical Podcasting and Public Engagement

Twenty-five years ago, technologists began experimenting with ways to distribute audio and video files over the Internet via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. They did so just as engineers began developing digital media players such as the iPod capable of downloading, storing, and playing audio and video content from third-party creators. The podcast was born not long after. Historians have been at the forefront of podcasting since its invention in the early 2000s, using the medium to communicate complex and evolving ideas about the past to public audiences in an accessible form. Since the early days of interview programs like Ben Franklin’s World to solo-authored and hosted narrative series like The History of Rome, history podcasting has evolved to encompass a wide array of formats, from the documentary-style series Worlds Turned Upside Down to hybrid series like After Dark, often with immersive soundscapes designed to situate the listener in the emotional and auditory context of the historical moment. At the same time, while solo podcasting has continued, historians have also begun constructing institutional and multi-institutional frameworks such as R2 Studios at George Mason University, and collaborating with private and nonprofit entities like the UK’s History Hit network, to produce history podcasts at scale, share labor loads, develop new sustainable financial models, and meet a continued growing public demand for new stories of the past. Nevertheless, this evolution raises several critical methodological and ethical questions about how historians can and should present history using this medium. How do we balance scholarly rigor against accessibility? How do we reconstruct historical eras that pre-date audio in audio form? What role should universities and cultural heritage institutions play in driving this work? What would it mean to peer review a podcast? In this talk, we will consider this history and these fundamental questions.