Category: Uncategorized
-
To Fix a National Character: The United States in the First Barbary War, 1800-1805
At long last, my first monograph is available for pre-order! You can buy it through Johns Hopkins UP (the publisher) or any number of other establishments that sell books. It’s a book about the First Barbary War, and how the United States tried to use its conflicts with the Barbary states to enter the Mediterranean…
-
End-of-Year Episode Roundup
Last year I talked about the podcasts I loved in 2020. This year, I wanted to call out specific episodes I’ve listened to that have impacted me in some way. These are in no particular order, except for the #1 episode that has had the most impact on my life this year. I’ll put that…
-
30 Days of Podcasts
Arielle Nissenblatt challenged folks on Twitter to do #podcast30, which is listening to one podcast every day and posting about it. Naturally I’m all in for such an endeavor. So I’ll be updating this post every day with my listen for that day, along with my brief comments (which I’m also posting on Twitter). Day…
-
A New Gig: R2 Studios
I have a new title: head of studio. At RRCHNM we’ve just spun off a new unit, which we’re calling R2 Studios. Its purpose is to create deeply researched historical audio stories, which you might call “history podcasts.” As the person at the Center with the most podcasting experience, I’ve been tapped to lead this…
-
A Difficult (Podcast) Undertaking
Eric Nuzum, whose podcasting work I greatly admire, wrote recently that he thinks that episode narrative podcasting might be on its way out. He means narrative podcasts that have a clear beginning and end, like a miniseries, rather than a series like Consolation Prize, which could theoretically go on indefinitely. He made some very compelling…
-
Wrapping Up Season 1
Today we released the final episode of Season 1 of Consolation Prize. The whole team is going to have a debrief session sometime later this summer, but I figured I should get my thoughts down while they’re still fresh. So here’s a few random thoughts about this first foray into narrative podcasting, for me and…
-
Why Assign Podcasts
I’m not a fully disinterested observer here; as you know, I am the host and executive producer of a podcast, so of course I want more people to listen to my podcast. But I think there’s a lot of value in assigning podcasts for students of history, of any age or schooling status. Here are…
-
Not-Monograph History
(Yes, I’m avoiding doing work on my actual monograph right now, along with a hundred other things.) I’m deeply invested in the idea of creating (and learning) history through not-monographs. And in the past several months and years, I’ve been trying to put my money where my mouth is about this. I’ve been teaching not-monograph…