Lessons from the past

Bethany Harper read plenty of history books as a student in Biola University’s honors program. The 26-year-old graduated with a nursing degree and now cares for pediatric cardiac patients as a missionary. These days she doesn’t have as much time to read books, but she still craves stories from the past. So, when she gets a quiet moment in between patient appointments, she pops in earbuds for her history fix.

Her current dose is American politics in 1968 and the three-way showdown between Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and George Wallace. It’s a time period Harper had always heard of but didn’t know much about. Now, thanks to “America in ’68: Nixon’s Great Comeback”—Episode 513 of a podcast called The Rest Is History—she does.

“They go through each candidate, what they stood for, and what the interesting history behind each of them was,” Harper says.

The Rest Is History, co-hosted by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, is the most popular history show currently trending on Apple Podcasts. But it’s far from the only one. Type “history” into a podcast search and at least 25 different options appear, with names that illustrate their popular appeal: Not What You Thought You Knew or Stuff You Missed in History Class. History podcasts have become so popular that the American Historical Association—the largest organization of professional historians in the world—recently launched an annual prize to recognize the best one.

The popularity of history podcasts is partly due to the medium. Podcasts covering all types of subjects have become part of our mobile culture’s daily routines. History also taps into two other perennially popular podcast genres: mystery and true crime. With the right storyteller, history has a good blend of both.

“There’s something innate about history that has a literary quality. We just can’t get enough of good stories,” says Thomas Kidd, professor of history at Baylor University and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Kidd says the need for story is hardwired into human existence, and stories that show human folly, abuse of power, and the fall-and-redemption arc resonate with everyone.

While Kidd has seen fewer college students majoring in history—mirroring the overall decline in liberal arts—that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer students are taking history classes. Many students, like Harper, who’ve opted for the more “practical” STEM fields, still want to understand our collective historical narrative. It speaks to a human desire to know where we came from and why things happened.

But in some universities, political agendas took over the classroom, and degree rates for liberal arts majors have fallen as students avoid fields tainted by ideology.

Tom Holland (left) and Dominic Sandbrook, hosts of The Rest Is History. Facebook

“History that’s moralistic is not very interesting, and history that’s constantly harping on and saying how horrible these people are because they’re not modern and progressive like us, that’s bad history,” Kidd says.

Podcast host Greg Jackson agrees: “As in the classroom, my goal is to make rigorously researched history come to life as your storyteller, with no agenda other than making the past come to life as you learn,” he says in the introduction to his show, History That Doesn’t Suck.

Dominic Sandbrook, an Oxford- and Cambridge-trained historian, also worries that children in school get a partisan view of the past. In an interview with The Telegraph, Sandbrook’s co-host Tom Holland said that history doesn’t exist to teach moral lessons. “We try to avoid a finger-wagging style of history,” he added.

Instead, Holland and Sandbrook follow dramatic narratives with contagious enthusiasm in a dynamic back-and-forth. They highlight humorous parts of the story, making history less a list of dates and facts, and more the endless tale of the intertwining of human lives. Listeners feel like they’re eavesdropping on a spirited debate in the back of a British pub. It’s a winning formula. Holland and Sandbrook’s podcast has 12 million monthly downloads and 45,000 subscribers who pay for early access to special episodes. And lest you think those are the fusty, dusty set: Half of The Rest Is History’s listeners are under 35.

“Good history delivers interesting stories, interesting personalities and perennial themes,” Kidd says. “If you just stay out of the way and let the story tell itself, then you’ll have a really compelling story.”

Like Harper, listeners can discover the background to events they’ve heard about, but never really learned.

That kind of context helps us understand our current world, says Sarah Weicksel, incoming executive director of the American Historical Association. “We would argue that there should be a historian at every boardroom table, every company conversation, to bring different kinds of insights and ask different sorts of questions.”

Weicksel says the AHA wants to encourage accessibility of historical study for everyone, not just Ph.D. candidates, and podcasts are part of that. AHA even has its own podcast, called History in Focus. Weicksel says it’s “designed to ‘go under the hood’ and look at the way history is done in the 21st century. It’s the who, what, where, and why tied to articles we’ve published or projects featured in our journal.”

But perhaps the best reason to listen to history is its capacity to remind us of its long arc. We are just points on a line, and remembering that is good for the soul. As one listener to Stuff You Missed in History Class wrote: “This podcast is a gift for the curious and helps get me out of my doom spiral. In the darkest present-­day times, having a podcast that is not about the current world is like a warm bath.”