Dan Carlin | The New Golden Age of Oral Historical Storytelling | Talks at Google

1. 0:00 – 0:06

   Intro

   1. SPSpeaker0:00

      [upbeat music]

2. 0:06 – 1:08

   Welcome and setup: experiencing history "on the ground"

   1. SPSpeaker0:06

      We are here today with, uh, Dan Carlin. Uh, he is the, uh, host of two very popular podcasts, Hardcore History and Common Sense. Uh, believe it or not, he's been in this, uh, business since 2005.

   2. DCDan Carlin0:17

      '05.

   3. SPSpeaker0:18

      Um, and he's had a tremendous amount of success in the, uh, in, in the podcast world, influence in, in the historical world as well. Uh, so join me again to welcome Dan. [clapping]

   4. DCDan Carlin0:30

      You have a wonderful facility here.

   5. SPSpeaker0:33

      So, uh, most of you guys are probably all familiar with, uh, the Hardcore History, uh, podcast series. Uh, it focuses on deep dives into historical events and, and puts them in context so that we can understand them better. So I wanted, uh, to throw Dan a little bit of a curveball, um, and ask him, he always talks about what happens if you were there? What would the experience be like if you were on the ground experiencing that history? So I wanted to ask Dan to tell us about a historical experience that, that he experienced on the ground, uh, in Dan Carlin's voice, live today.

   6. DCDan Carlin1:06

      [laughs]

   7. SPSpeaker1:07

      [laughs]

3. 1:08 – 2:38

   From history major to newsroom: why context matters in reporting

   1. DCDan Carlin1:08

      Well, um, when I got into news, I, I got out of college. I didn't know what I wanted to do specifically. Um, so I got in the news business somehow and, and I remember, you know, I was a history major. And, and when I was a history major at the University of Colorado, they actually had in the history department these, these pamphlets that said, "What to tell your parents about choosing [laughs] a history major," because everybody said, uh, you know, "What are you gonna do with this?" So I got to news and then found out that so many of the reporters... You know, I was a news guy in LA, and in LA, there's two kinds of reporters. There's, there's the kind that you send out on real deep, difficult stories, and then there are the ones you, you know, you send out to do the Hollywood stories and all that. And they're really two different kinds of reporters. And the kind of reporters that I wanted to be like, I found out an amazing amount of them had history, um, as their background. Um, I remember seeing Connie Chung, I think she spoke at college, and I, I went to the, the get-together, and it was a journalism department get-together. And somebody raised their hand and said, uh, "What courses would you suggest we take that will help us when we get out into the news business?" And she said, I'm paraphrasing here, but she said, "This is gonna be a really unpopular answer to tell a bunch of J students, but I would take all the courses you're not getting right now. I would go to the geography department, I would go to the history department." She goes, "Because anything you're learning in journalism, they're gonna reteach you your first six months on the job." She says, "The stuff you're not gonna get is the background stuff." So when I got into news, all of a sudden I felt like, okay, maybe this is a place for people who've studied history, and I didn't really realize why until I'd done it for a while, and it's because you have the context, right? And what was fun for a history major

4. 2:38 – 5:10

   Living through the LA riots: the confusion of history in real time

   1. DCDan Carlin2:38

      is you had this opportunity to be at events, to answer your question, where history was, was taking place. So you'd do these horrible stories that made you feel bad at the end of the day that had nothing to do with ... Coffee roasters downtown open a new, uh, building or whatever. But then sometimes you'd have an LA riot, and the LA riots were the biggest thing that I ever personally witnessed. And I remember being in college and, and I was in college in Colorado, and you'd hear these stories about earthquakes and fires in Los Angeles. And I'd call home and I'd say, "I hear things are just awful," and my mom would go, "They're nothing. They're just hyping that story up." I always say the LA riots were the only story that was really as big on the ground as everybody thought it was. I mean, that wasn't being hyped up at all. And the story was so weird because... And this was the lesson, I guess, when you're talking about what it's like to go through history, because you have no idea what's really going on while you're in it, and you're trying to make sense of it. So like on the first day of the riots, you had to go into work. Now, you guys will all understand this. You have to go into work sometimes when there's big news stories breaking. So there's this unconscious bias to downplay the importance of the news story if it's your day off, right? [laughs] 'Cause you kinda think there, oh, this isn't so bad. I remember looking out over the horizon and there's multiple fires burning and I'm thinking, "I don't have to go. This isn't a big deal. I don't have to go into work." So two days later, they call me and scream at me and say, "Everybody's at work. Where are you?" So I get in the car, head down to work, and it's like a nuclear bomb went off, and it's traffic... I mean, I, I lived 15 minutes from work. It took me an hour and a half to get there. And I remember thinking, "Okay, if there were ever a nuclear war, nobody's getting out of anything." So I went to the building, and then the first day we're interviewing looters. And again, this is an example of how a story that, of, of giant historical importance, at least for that city, didn't seem like it at the time, right? You walk up to people carrying stuff out of buildings, and you stick a mic in their face, and you start interviewing them. Two days later, they were shooting at the reporters, and we weren't interviewing anybody anymore, so we started covering things from the air, so just helicopters. So I still remember Laura Diaz, who was a, an anchor at, at KABC then, coming up the stairs, white as a sheet, saying, "They just shot the helicopter. We're not going out there anymore." And that's when we knew we couldn't go home. They brought in cots. They brought in food. And then they put a curfew in my home city, and I'd never seen a curfew in Los Angeles. They also shut all the lights out in Hollywood, and I'd never seen the lights out. But they shut the lights out because it was backlighting the soldiers that they'd brought into the city and making them targets. And so we had a pass to be out after curfew, and I'm driving in my home city, and it's dark, and there's soldiers on every street corner. And I have a scanner in my car, and you can hear

5. 5:10 – 6:47

   Aftermath and perspective lag: realizing what really happened

   1. DCDan Carlin5:10

      these, "This guy's being shot here. We have somebody charging the, the..." And it was surreal. And so I remember thinking that this is maybe what it must be like when you're living through history because you don't know what's going on, and you're piecing it together with other people who are living through it at the same time. And I remember, like, couple of days later feeling like, was that all real? Did that all real, really happen? And I remember going to pick up my dry cleaning. I had, like, three things in my wardrobe that could be dry cleaned, all my nicest clothes. It was right by the TV station. And I walk into this place, remember thinking, did this even really happen? And I wa- [laughs] I walked into this dry cleaners, and there wasn't a stitch of clothing in the place. And the windows were all boarded up. And like an idiot, I still presented my ticket to the guy.

   2. SPSpeaker5:49

      [laughs]

   3. DCDan Carlin5:49

      And like an idiot, he looked at it like he was considering the pa-fact that maybe there were some clothes in the back on the floor that hadn't been taken. And then he handed it back to me and said, "No clothes."

   4. SPSpeaker5:57

      Mm.

   5. DCDan Carlin5:57

      And that's when I remember thinking, "Okay, I get it." And I looked, and then I walked out of the building, and I looked at the street, and the riot had literally taken out one side of the street and stopped right there, and the other side of the street was pristine. And I remember thinking, "Okay, this, this really happened." It took me a couple of years to really absorb, and I had to actually watch the, uh, TV specials and everything on this event before you could really see it the way it was. You know, they say you shouldn't write history for a certain period of time afterwards. I still don't think I fully understand that, and I was in it. So the, that was the biggest historical event I ever saw up close. And, and it's funny how- It'll be interesting, I guess, is what I'm saying, to read about this in 50 years and see how the stories 50 years... Well, as if I'm gonna be here. But, you know, uh, how it will diff- differ from the experience I saw on the ground.

   6. SPSpeaker6:41

      Mm.

   7. DCDan Carlin6:41

      And I think that's probably a pretty good analogy what it must be like. It's a little confusing, and a little hard to put in perspective.

6. 6:47 – 10:38

   When witnesses listen: responsibility and the Eastern Front reaction

   1. SPSpeaker6:47

      Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. And, and a lot of your, your, uh, episodes, they've really covered a, a vast swath of, of time, everything from, from the Mongols to, to the recent world wars. Uh, how do you hear back from, from readers who've actually been in those events? And how do they respond to hearing about their experiences retold?

   2. DCDan Carlin7:09

      In that sense, it's kinda easier to do, uh, earlier stuff, because if I get it wrong, I don't have to hear from anybody-

   3. SPSpeaker7:14

      [laughs]

   4. DCDan Carlin7:14

      ... who was there. Um, uh, you know, we were talking before we did this about, uh, I did a show called, uh, three shows I guess it was, called Ghosts of the Ostfront once, and it was about the Eastern Front in the Second World War. And I was looking at it from the perspective of, if you're an American or someone from Britain or France or any of the Allies that weren't the Soviet Union, you have, um, a specific view of the war. And to us, it's hard to see either the Russians or certainly the Germans as the good guys or the aggrieved or victims in any way, shape, or form. So I was trying to do this show where I, I tried to look at it from the perspective of people who are, like, caught in the gears of history, right? I mean, the average person in that war had no say at all, especially in these dictatorships, right? Um, there were few conscientious objectors in Germany. I said there were none, and heard from a bunch of Jehovah's Witnesses who said they were beheading Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany who wouldn't go into the war. But I did this show. We tried to do it from the perspective of a bunch of people trapped in a horrible situation, and a guy wrote me... I heard from a lot of Germans. Um, one guy wrote me, said, "My grandfather was on the Eastern Front and he's never spoken about it." So he said, "I got in the car and I took a chance. We were gonna have a long drive. I put your show in, we drove for six hours. My grandfather said nothing."

   5. SPSpeaker8:30

      Yeah.

   6. DCDan Carlin8:30

      He said, "We parked at the location, I turned off the audio, and he starts babbling about everything that happened to him that he's never told the family."

   7. SPSpeaker8:37

      Mm.

   8. DCDan Carlin8:38

      And I guess, I'm trying to remember, this is years ago now, but the guy's point was something to the effect of, these are people who never felt that they could recount the horror and the things that happened to them, because who wants to hear it from the bad guys, right? They're human beings who suffered-

   9. SPSpeaker8:51

      Mm

   10. DCDan Carlin8:51

       ... but they were the bad guys. And, and any time anyone brings that up, all you can think about is, yeah, but what about the people on the other side? Remembering, I think as we must, that truthfully, by an accident of where you were born and when you were born, it could've been you. It could've been me. And so this idea that somehow somebody who was there listened to this and got something positive out of it-

   11. SPSpeaker9:15

       Mm

   12. DCDan Carlin9:15

       ... was so different from, say, the 15-year-old today living, downloaded it and got something positive out of it.

   13. SPSpeaker9:22

       Yeah.

   14. DCDan Carlin9:22

       The problem, of course, is you feel kinda like you got this responsibility now, and it makes it a heck of a lot harder to walk in the studio next time and just blithely talk about the Eastern Front in the Second World War when you realize people that are still trying to deal with the scars that were inflicted on them then are listening to it also. So there's something a lot easier about doing a show on the Mongols from the-

   15. SPSpeaker9:41

       [laughs]

   16. DCDan Carlin9:41

       ... 14th century than doing a show like, we were considering doing one on the New Left in the late 1960s, The Weather Underground, the bombings and all that. And I said, "Do I really wanna hear from all those people?"

   17. SPSpeaker9:52

       [laughs]

   18. DCDan Carlin9:52

       Because they're literally gonna write you and say-

   19. SPSpeaker9:54

       Right

   20. DCDan Carlin9:54

       ... "I was there, you're an idiot. You don't know what you're talking about."

   21. SPSpeaker9:56

       [laughs] Right.

   22. DCDan Carlin9:56

       And so, um, Mongols are easier, but there's something if you do it right, and, you know, that's a bit of a crapshoot, but if you do it right, there's something really satisfying about somebody saying, "Yeah, we got something really positive out of that."

   23. SPSpeaker10:07

       Right.

   24. DCDan Carlin10:07

       So that to me is, um, that's an example maybe about what the new media can do a little bit.

   25. SPSpeaker10:14

       Mm-hmm.

   26. DCDan Carlin10:14

       'Cause that's a really niche market, speaking to Eastern Front veterans that are still alive. [laughs]

   27. SPSpeaker10:18

       Right. Sure.

   28. DCDan Carlin10:18

       But the fact that they, they got something out of it was, uh, was neat.

   29. SPSpeaker10:21

       Right. And so what happens if, if, if you kind of follow this, this, this trend, you, you's finding a lot of positive experiences from people who do learn about it, people who learn about it differently despite, uh, actually being there. What happens if we go the other way? What if we don't know all this history?

7. 10:38 – 13:44

   What if society forgets history? Mental frameworks and niche audiences

   1. DCDan Carlin10:38

      You know, I've been thinking about that a lot too, because, uh, you know, I have kids, and, and my youngest daughter, for example, is not a big reader, doesn't like all this kinda stuff. And you, and you think to yourself, okay, if this is representative of her generation, and I don't know that it is-

   2. SPSpeaker10:49

      Mm-hmm

   3. DCDan Carlin10:49

      ... um, what would happen if the great mass of society really didn't know anything-

   4. SPSpeaker10:55

      Mm

   5. DCDan Carlin10:55

      ... about the past, if this became a specialist, uh, endeavor, like biologist or something where if you wanna know what happened 10 years ago, you go to a specialist as opposed to having some sort of context. And I feel like it's a little bit like a great experiment, because on one hand I keep telling myself, okay, most people didn't know real history throughout most of human experience, so maybe there's nothing different about it. And yet, y- you know, we were talking about this great concept about in, in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

   6. SPSpeaker11:22

      Mm-hmm.

   7. DCDan Carlin11:23

      If, if you're the person, the 1 out of 100 of your generation that likes history, and you study it, and you learn context from it, does that give you a leg up in your life? Um, it's hard for me to know, because I have this weird theory that's totally, um, um, unsupported by any evidence that I know of, um, that, that different people have different ways of organizing their mental framework. So I have a friend who's a mathematical genius. To him, everything is numbers, right? He organizes his whole frame of thought through numbers. I organize mine in a historical sense, and a lot of the people I went to school with that were history majors did the same thing. So I think there's gotta be a whole bunch of different ways to organize your mind. But the problem is, is it makes it really hard to imagine how other people who don't organize their mind the way you do organize their thinking. So for me, it's all linear. A equals B, then B happens, then C happens, and that's how I think. So I think with the podcast, you know, we keep thinking about, how do we make a podcast for the audience that the audience likes when we don't know about the audience? And so we decided that the only thing we can control is what we like, and that if we talk about what I like to talk about and that interests me, eventually you will, you will, um, self-select your audience.

   8. SPSpeaker12:31

      Mm-hmm.

   9. DCDan Carlin12:31

      And they will be people who like what you like too. So you will be able to say, "Okay, I'll talk about this 'cause I like it, and I know these people will like it also." Um, and so- I think that the people that like it are, tend to be people that organize their thinking in a historical linear framework. I think if you're a numbers guy, you might listen to my show and find 900 things wrong with it. If you're a history guy, you listen to it, or gal, um, and you go, "Oh, yeah, I, that, that speaks to me somehow."

   10. SPSpeaker12:55

       Mm.

   11. DCDan Carlin12:55

       And so, I mean, I think part of the new media is the ability instead of broadcasting and having to appeal to everybody out there, you can say, "No, no, no, I'm targeting this little, teeny, narrow demographic." And I, I like to say, you know, um, if you're a H- Harry Potter fan, what are the networks giving you, right? Okay, but there's like three or four podcasts just on Harry Potter.

   12. SPSpeaker13:13

       Mm.

   13. DCDan Carlin13:14

       So if that's really what you like, or 1950s science fiction comic books, or, or classic motorcycles or whatever it is, it might be a small audience that's interested in that, but they're passionate about it, right? It's one thing to say, "I watch this TV show that everybody likes, and I, I like it, too." It's another thing to have somebody speaking right to your soul in a way that you can relate to about something you love. And I think for me, that's, when I think about what we're, what we're getting to history-wise, I'm not teaching anybody anything.

   14. SPSpeaker13:41

       Mm-hmm.

   15. DCDan Carlin13:41

       We're reveling in this information.

   16. SPSpeaker13:44

       Mm-hmm.

8. 13:44 – 17:45

   History as science vs. humanity: losing the human element

   1. DCDan Carlin13:44

      And some of it's false, and we have to acknowledge that some of it's false, but that doesn't change... You know, I read these histories from 100 years ago, and they're full of falsities, and romancing, and, and racism, and all these things that 100 years ago history, but it's colorful.

   2. SPSpeaker13:56

      Mm.

   3. DCDan Carlin13:56

      And, and, and if you can say to yourself, "Okay, I'm gonna put aside the question of facts for a minute," because I'm not so sure our facts today are all that factual sometimes. Um, you can really sort of swim in that kind of thing, and if you love history, it's immensely satisfying. And so we try to draw some of that, 'cause I'm not a historian.

   4. SPSpeaker14:15

      Mm-hmm.

   5. DCDan Carlin14:15

      And I think historians today, and I've said this before, are better than any historians we've ever had. It's all peer-reviewed. They savage each other. It's like a science, which is great if you're looking for factual information, but you lose something. You lose that, you know, history used to be a part of the humanities. It still is at a lot of colleges, but if you looked at the, the list, it would say, "Humanities, history." Well, that puts you in the same category with law, language, religion, poetry, and all those kind of things. It's a very different subject-

   6. SPSpeaker14:43

      Mm

   7. DCDan Carlin14:43

      ... than if it puts you in the social sciences, which puts you in with, you know, anthropology, archeology. And again, more scientific, more facts, but do you lose something in the transition? What I've always wondered is if maybe you don't even have two disciplines there, um, history as a humanity and history as a social science, because they almost do different work. The history as a social science is rigorously fact-based, and it's wonderful, but if I open up a history book from 50 years ago, it fails every test you would have to pass to be in that category. But it's immensely more satisfying to a non-specialist reader. And you ask yourself why. Because there's something more human about it. But whenever you're dealing with people, we are so variable and weird. I mean, how do you, how do I put you versus you in these... I mean, it just, you're dealing with an inherently unstable situation. And as long as you can enjoy that, history becomes immensely satisfying, I think, to non-specialists. But you gotta be careful, because it's certainly not the way history's done today. So I often think when you go into a bookstore and you look at the, the new books that are out, you're gonna see a bunch of books about historical figures and history and everything else from authors. Not historians, just authors, because they're great storytellers, and they know how to tell that story in a way that relates to a non-specialist. And I think the specialists must hate that sometimes-

   8. SPSpeaker16:00

      [laughs]

   9. DCDan Carlin16:00

      ... because they, they, they generalize and they do all the things. But, but if you're creating the next generation of history fans, and let's be honest, if you're a history professor and you wanna teach people who are interested in history, somebody's gotta appetize them, for lack of a better word, right?

   10. SPSpeaker16:14

       Mm.

   11. DCDan Carlin16:14

       Somebody's gotta, um, create the next generation of history professors. Victor Davis Hanson, the historian, uh, he's a classicist, and he wrote about how the classicists are destroying the next generation of people who wanna learn classics by making it so devoid of the things that an average person would care about. So I think, and I would hope, that we're appetizing people, for lack of a better word.

   12. SPSpeaker16:35

       Mm-hmm.

   13. DCDan Carlin16:35

       And, and, and, you know, people tell me that they become history majors because of this stuff. That's wonderful. And then they can write me later and say, "You know, I used to love your show till I found out all the things wrong about it." [laughs]

   14. SPSpeaker16:44

       [laughs] Right.

   15. DCDan Carlin16:44

       "And now that I'm a historian, I can explain those to you."

   16. SPSpeaker16:46

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   17. DCDan Carlin16:47

       Um, but yeah, so I mean, I, uh, from a standpoint of, um, of what we're doing, I mean, I, I think it's a little bit like the way an author writes a book about a historical subject and knows how to bring out the things that appeal to someone who's making a TV or a movie. Um, it's a different thing, I think. I think history's become a science, and I think by becoming a science, you lose some of the elements that, that impact people on a human level.

   18. SPSpeaker17:12

       Mm-hmm.

   19. DCDan Carlin17:12

       Does that make sense?

   20. SPSpeaker17:12

       Makes sense. And-

   21. DCDan Carlin17:13

       Not intentionally, just because some things are very hard to quantify.

   22. SPSpeaker17:17

       And coming back to that human level, we've, we've also transitioned to an age where some of the things you, you wish you had, uh, on, on your episodes where you say, "I wish I, I had known what this person was, was thinking, writing, feeling," some of that we have now. We have people being able to, to directly record their feelings, uh, record what happened in, in digital media. How do you think that changes how we're then gonna look back at history at these time periods with this wealth of additional direct information?

9. 17:45 – 21:52

   A golden age for storytellers: no gatekeepers and lasting archives

   1. DCDan Carlin17:45

      Well, I've started to adopt a, a term for what I do that other people use. Um, I don't like it, uh, but, but it's, uh, it, like, when I deal with people who are talking about TV shows or, they all talk about storytellers.

   2. SPSpeaker17:57

      Mm-hmm.

   3. DCDan Carlin17:57

      And there's this real dearth, apparently, of professional storytellers, which is why you have these movies coming out that are 1970s cartoons turned into a feature length film and part four. It's just, it, a dearth of storytellers, they tell me. So I was breaking down what a storyteller means if you just use the words story and telling. And you think about the modern world and how it opens up the possibilities for anybody who has, we'll just play with the idea of a gene, but you know what I mean, a storyteller gene. Some of you out there are great storytellers, and it's almost an innate quality. Doesn't mean you can't improve it, but it's an innate quality. I, I had a grandfather who was a great storyteller. This opens up the door, the new media and everything in it, with no gatekeepers. You know, we've gone away from the whole idea that, that someone can prevent you from telling your stories, or that you somehow have to please them before they let you see if an audience likes what you do. So for storytellers, this is a golden age. Because you're gonna have more storytellers working and telling stories than you've ever had in the history of the world. Um, and, you know, I, I always quote this quote that may or may not have been a Napoleon quote. Some people say it's a Joseph Stalin quote, but it's that quantity has a quality all its own. And I used to go around selling the idea of amateur content in the 1990s, and I would go to these, um, executives and they would say, w- w- nobody's gonna like this. It's gonna be juvenile, and if they were any good they'd be, they'd be making money for what they're doing. And I tried to explain that, listen, you're gonna have so much stuff that if even .05% of it's good, there's gonna be a ton of good things made out by 15-year-old kids in their basement. Um, so from a storytelling standpoint, the amount of people doing this has exploded, which means even if a lot of it is crap, for lack of a better word, a lot of it's not, and you have a lot of people that are working now and in telling stories in a business where there aren't that many jobs for that. So, so we've improved the number of people who have access to telling their stories who are good at it. The other side are the stories themselves. There are a lot of people who aren't good storytellers at all, but have lived through things, or have relatives, or friends, or people they know who have lived through amazing things who would love to document that.

   4. SPSpeaker20:06

      Mm-hmm.

   5. DCDan Carlin20:07

      Your grandfather fought in the Second World War, lived through some amazing things. No one's gonna know that, right, after they're gone and after you're gone.

   6. SPSpeaker20:14

      Mm-hmm.

   7. DCDan Carlin20:15

      But that doesn't have to be the case anymore. You can record a terrible podcast with awful audio and horrific storytelling skills, but get that information down in a way that future historians will see as nuggets of gold that they can mine later.

   8. SPSpeaker20:31

      Mm-hmm.

   9. DCDan Carlin20:32

      Because if you imagine how 200 years from now they're gonna look back on this era, and think about what the historians are going to have to work with compared to what we have now. If you had TV shows that you could view now from 1750-

   10. SPSpeaker20:47

       Mm-hmm

   11. DCDan Carlin20:47

       ... how would that change your view of people 200 and some years ago? So I mean, I think from a storytelling standpoint, on the story side we're gonna have stories for historians that dwarf any material they've ever had available, and we're gonna have storytellers who would've died on the vine somewhere telling their friends in a bar great stories-

   12. SPSpeaker21:05

       Mm

   13. DCDan Carlin21:05

       ... who are going to be able to tell those stories to thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of people. And not just now, but I always try to say, you know, if we do a show today, how many people are going to have heard that show 100 years from now? So I mean, there's a long game going on here that old media doesn't deal with. Old media does, what's the next ratings period? Is this show gonna be around in a year? When you put your grandfather's World War II experiences in an audio form set in digital stone, for lack of a better word, you die, he dies, 200 years from now some historian finds that and your grandfather's story becomes part of a larger mosaic of experiences that gets added somewhere else. In other words, people are creating history every day now-

   14. SPSpeaker21:49

       Right

   15. DCDan Carlin21:49

       ... in a way that would've been lost even 15 years ago.

10. 21:52 – 24:25

    Maintaining a "Martian perspective" amid polarization—and political uncertainty

    1. SPSpeaker21:52

       And that, that storytelling, I think you focus a lot on, uh, on your Martian perspective. Uh, have you been there?

    2. DCDan Carlin22:00

       Yeah, that's a nice way of saying-

    3. SPSpeaker22:01

       [laughs]

    4. DCDan Carlin22:01

       ... I have a really weird way of seeing things. Yeah.

    5. SPSpeaker22:03

       Uh, how do you, how do you ensure that you retain that Martian perspective in, in, uh, in media that's i- increasingly polarized or homogenous?

    6. DCDan Carlin22:15

       Well, I mean, I'm having this problem with the, uh, political show that we do right now. The, the, the show that we started doing first was Common Sense, and that was a show that drew right out of the radio shows I used to do. And for lack of a better word, w- politically I'm a reformer. I think we have some systemic problems that require, um, us working together to fix. Now, anything that requires Americans working together is a long shot right from the get-go, um, but you know, I talked about this for years. And then what was really, really weird to me was that what was a long shot when I started doing it in the early 1990s, all of a sudden, because I think the trends became more obvious to people, started looking like it wasn't such a long shot, and maybe history was turning my way. And a couple years ago I thought, "This is crazy, right?" I mean, we started this show when nobody cared, but the trends have-

    7. SPSpeaker22:57

       Mm

    8. DCDan Carlin22:57

       ... have luckily fallen into place to where what I'm talking about is actually more relevant to people than it was when I was in radio. And then, of course, strange things began to happen in our political system, and I sat down not that long ago and I said, "You know, I feel like my political viewpoints have been blown out of the water by events, and that somehow what I was talking about went from, hey, you know, you could actually see it potentially falling into place, to forget about that. We are now so far away from that, that what I'm talking about politically maybe isn't relevant anymore." And so I haven't done a Common Sense show-

    9. SPSpeaker23:28

       Mm

    10. DCDan Carlin23:28

        ... in a while because it's an inspiration-based program.

    11. SPSpeaker23:30

        Mm-hmm.

    12. DCDan Carlin23:30

        And I feel, to be honest, as lost as a lot of the country does. Uh, I don't feel like I have anything to share. I feel like I'm an observer, like everyone else. So, so you, you kinda have to feel like you know what you're talking about to talk about these kinds of things. And all of a sudden I felt like as much of a novice as everyone else. I mean, I feel like we're in an uncharted situation, uh, that I have no more ability to, to understand where we're going than anyone else, and so I haven't felt comfortable doing it.

    13. SPSpeaker23:54

        Mm-hmm.

    14. DCDan Carlin23:54

        And so from, from a politics standpoint, um, I don't know what to do about that show. In terms of Martian perspective for the history standpoint, I, I mean, I feel like that's who I am.

    15. SPSpeaker24:03

        Mm-hmm.

    16. DCDan Carlin24:04

        Uh, I, I, I'm not sure I could be anything but that. And just so you guys know, I picked Martian because it, there are no overtones to it. I mean, I tried to think-

    17. SPSpeaker24:11

        Right

    18. DCDan Carlin24:11

        ... how do you explain an outsider's perspective without having some baggage attached to any term you can think of?

    19. SPSpeaker24:16

        Right.

    20. DCDan Carlin24:16

        And I thought, well, what's the baggage attached to Martian, you know? Um, so it was a good way-

    21. SPSpeaker24:21

        Mm

    22. DCDan Carlin24:21

        ... to say I'm different, but not in any way you can easily classify.

11. 24:25 – 28:17

    Radio vs. podcasting: escaping constraints into creative white space

    1. SPSpeaker24:25

       Makes sense. Makes sense. And how has that perspective evolved from, from the radio days? I think, uh, a lot of people here are obviously, they've been sampling from a variety of media. Radio is still a part of our lives. How, how do you feel working in radio versus podcasts gives you a different perspective?

    2. DCDan Carlin24:44

       Radio was awful for me. So, so this perspective is very different right off the bat. Um, listen, we all understand. We've all heard radio. It's a, it's a very specific kind of medium that's developed over 50 or 60 years a certain way. If you go back and you listen to old radio shows, obviously- There's a lot more creativity. Um, there was a lot more theater of the mind, uh, as they called it. The ability to have you sit by a box with a voice coming out, and you in your head determine everything. But like I was trying to explain to my kids the difference between reading a book or going and seeing the movie about the book. And the difference is, is, is when you read the book, you're all reading the same words, but you're conjuring up different images in your head.

    3. SPSpeaker25:24

       Mm.

    4. DCDan Carlin25:24

       What does the main character look like to you, right? If I show you the main character, you don't have to think about that anymore. Um, in radio, when you look at the way stories were told, and that... It was storytelling-

    5. SPSpeaker25:35

       Mm-hmm

    6. DCDan Carlin25:35

       ... a lot of the time. I mean, radio obviously had news, sports, all the things it has now, but it also had dramas and all these kinds of things that the radio format really doesn't allow for now. And I remember a, an older person who grew up on radio said that it's like a muscle, and if you don't use it, you lose some of that ability. So, like, if I played an old radio show for my 12-year-old, she's gonna be bored to tears. She's not gonna get it. It's not gonna mean anything to her. Um, and, and so w- by the time I'm in radio, we wanna play with some of the creative tools that audio allows you to have, but it's such a restrictive venue. Was then, and is more now, right? You have a top of the hour news break. You have a break 10 minutes after the hour. You have... I mean, there's all these things that constrain what you can do. And then add to that the fact that you have to assume that your audience is turning over every 15 minutes in large number, right? You're getting into the car, you're getting out of the car. So what does that mean I have to do? I have to restate the same things over and over again.

    7. SPSpeaker26:27

       Mm.

    8. DCDan Carlin26:27

       I mean, my, um, my moment in radio where I knew I was doomed happened when I had a, yet another fight with a consultant who told me that everyone in the audience has to know where I stand on every political issue within five minutes of turning on the program.

    9. SPSpeaker26:43

       [laughs]

    10. DCDan Carlin26:44

        Now, first of all, nobody's saying, "Okay, here are my views on all the subjects of the day." In other words, what they, what they meant is you have to be so obviously identifiable-

    11. SPSpeaker26:52

        Mm

    12. DCDan Carlin26:52

        ... that when they hear you, they can tell what your views on abortion are because of what your views on this other thing are. In other... And I said to him, "That's a cartoon character." I said, "That's not a real human being." He goes, "We're not in the business of marketing real human beings." Um, in other words, they were looking for a cartoon character.

    13. SPSpeaker27:08

        [laughs]

    14. DCDan Carlin27:09

        Now, I didn't get fired, so I must have been at least passably okay, but I never went the cartoon character route.

    15. SPSpeaker27:15

        Mm-hmm.

    16. DCDan Carlin27:15

        And so when the, the chance to do media on my terms, um, showed up, and you said, "Okay, this is your creative white space, and it's a giant space that's all white. There's no top of the hour news breaks. There's no resetting what you're talking about or who you are." From a creative standpoint, I lost my mind. It's just won-

    17. SPSpeaker27:35

        Mm

    18. DCDan Carlin27:35

        ... It's the... I would do 20 different podcasts if I could, because I have ideas for all these things, 'cause it's just such an ama- We do six-hour shows sometimes.

    19. SPSpeaker27:43

        Right. [laughs]

    20. DCDan Carlin27:43

        Who does six-hour shows? Who lets you do six-hour shows?

    21. SPSpeaker27:46

        Yeah. [laughs]

    22. DCDan Carlin27:46

        Right? Um, and so I'm intoxicated by the creative white space. And one of the things about radio was that that white space was diminishing the whole time I was in it.

    23. SPSpeaker27:54

        Mm-hmm.

    24. DCDan Carlin27:54

        By the time the 1996 Telecommunications Act was passed, and we went from having a radio station owner that was in the building with you to a, a- an owner that's on Wall Street selling stock and owns 1,000 radio stations, I mean, we went from little white space to none.

    25. SPSpeaker28:10

        Mm. Right.

    26. DCDan Carlin28:11

        And so for me, this opened up at just around about the same time, and it was like an escape hatch. It's perfect.

    27. SPSpeaker28:16

        Right.

    28. DCDan Carlin28:17

        It's perfect.

12. 28:17 – 31:14

    Podcasting goes mainstream: professionals enter, the audience grows

    1. SPSpeaker28:17

       And how did this change over the time that, that you worked in the space? In 2005, you started your podcast. 2015, uh, that's 10 years later, Serial comes out. Serial hits mainstream media. You guys both win the best podcast, uh-

    2. DCDan Carlin28:33

       2014 category, yeah

    3. SPSpeaker28:33

       ... decided in the categories 2014, 2015. Um, bringing a whole new set of, of, uh, listeners and changing what it means to be a podcast. How did that affect your show, and how did it change how you approached the problem?

    4. DCDan Carlin28:48

       It was a continuation of a trend that was already going on. So when I got into podcasting in 2005, I, we always say we, we got... We started podcasting the same month that iTunes started supporting podcasts.

    5. SPSpeaker28:58

       Mm-hmm.

    6. DCDan Carlin28:59

       Um, and when we did, there was no professional content on it.

    7. SPSpeaker29:02

       Mm.

    8. DCDan Carlin29:03

       One of the great things that was done to nurture the podcasting space was not dividing professional and amateur content and separating this. So you don't have a, a big link when you first go on there that says, "Do you want professional stuff or amateur stuff?" So by allowing us to compete with anyone in the same space, it became more of a meritocracy. Now, it didn't mean that ESPN didn't have huge advantages over you-

    9. SPSpeaker29:25

       Mm

    10. DCDan Carlin29:25

        ... but it meant you're still competing in the same space. Now, I always said that once the pros got into podcasting, it was a good thing for everybody.

    11. SPSpeaker29:32

        Mm-hmm.

    12. DCDan Carlin29:32

        'Cause we're all raised on, at least I was in my generation, raised on this idea that media's a zero-sum game. And if you're watching one TV network at 8:00, you're not watching the other TV network at 8:00. So no one has any interest in, in telling you about what's on the other network. Podcasting's not like that. Um, you can promote somebody else's podcast. It doesn't hurt your podcast at all. So when the big boys started coming in, and I don't remember who was first, I think some of the sports networks-

    13. SPSpeaker29:55

        Mm-hmm

    14. DCDan Carlin29:55

        ... were the first ones. And all they were doing was rebroadcasting their other content using podcasts as a distribution vehicle. I said, "This is great," because once you download a podcast, you're a podcast listener. It's no longer foreign. You know how to do it. And the biggest impediment we had when we started is I would go to dinner parties. You wanna imagine uncomfortable, and you sit at a dinner party, and the first question anybody asks is, "So what do you do for a living?"

    15. SPSpeaker30:17

        [laughs]

    16. DCDan Carlin30:18

        In 2006, this is a 45-minute conversation.

    17. SPSpeaker30:21

        Right. [laughs]

    18. DCDan Carlin30:21

        And at the end, the guy still doesn't know what I do for a living.

    19. SPSpeaker30:24

        Right.

    20. DCDan Carlin30:24

        Um, now it's not, right? Um, and, and so I think what helped us in that space is all of the professionals saying, "Yeah, download the podcast." And then once you do-

    21. SPSpeaker30:33

        Mm

    22. DCDan Carlin30:34

        ... you go, "What other podcasts are there out there? I know how to do that. I've got a podcatcher. I've got all these things." So I think the pros coming into it ended up increasing the, the size of the people who are potential listeners.

    23. SPSpeaker30:44

        Mm-hmm.

    24. DCDan Carlin30:44

        And then we could grab them. So how the industry has changed is that we went from something that no one knew what it was to something that everybody below a certain age does.

    25. SPSpeaker30:52

        Right.

    26. DCDan Carlin30:52

        And the respectability's gone up. No one assumes you're some kid in a basement-

    27. SPSpeaker30:56

        Yeah

    28. DCDan Carlin30:56

        ... although kids in basements can do wonderful work. Um, they think that this could be anything, and they're right.

    29. SPSpeaker31:02

        Right.

    30. DCDan Carlin31:02

        I mean, when you talk about the numbers of listeners, it's insane sometimes. Some of these... Serial has an insane number of listeners.
13. 31:14 – 35:47

    How Hardcore History gets made: editing evolution and business models

    1. SPSpeaker31:14

       ... of doing things. So I think a, a lot of people here, especially engineers, would, would love to know a little bit more about how do you build it? How do you put together that podcast from, from idea to, to episode coming out?

    2. DCDan Carlin31:25

       It's changed. Once upon a time, I could walk into, uh, the studio, and I could... I would sit down or s- stand up, and I would record the whole thing. Boom.

    3. SPSpeaker31:34

       Mm-hmm.

    4. DCDan Carlin31:34

       If I made a mistake, a, a, a fatal mistake-

    5. SPSpeaker31:37

       Oh, no

    6. DCDan Carlin31:37

       ... you know, 35 minutes into it, we turned it off and we started over. So finally, um-

    7. SPSpeaker31:42

       Wow

    8. DCDan Carlin31:42

       ... finally the engineer said, "Why are you doing that? Why don't you just..." You see, the problem started actually with a cough- no cough button. So in, in radio you have a cough button or a clear your throat button.

    9. SPSpeaker31:50

       Mm.

    10. DCDan Carlin31:50

        So you push it, clear your throat, you're off air.

    11. SPSpeaker31:53

        Mm.

    12. DCDan Carlin31:53

        So there wasn't anything like that. So [laughs] trying to clear your throat 35 minutes into it and say, "Ah, had to clear my throat, we have to start over." So the engineer said, "What?"

    13. SPSpeaker32:00

        [laughs]

    14. DCDan Carlin32:01

        "Why don't you just clear your throat and tell me about it, and I will get rid of that later?" Which started the process of, okay, I, I... this show was great. I wanted to do 50 minutes. 49 minutes were great, the ending sucked, let's start over. And he's like, "No, no, no, we're not starting over. We're gonna just record the one minute that you didn't do." And so slowly but surely it became more that way, and I was scared. Because as a radio guy, not knowing where this podcast was going, I'm thinking, "If this doesn't work, I gotta go dive back into radio. What if I lose my chops? What if I can't... now I need editing, right? I c- I can't go in there and speak-

    15. SPSpeaker32:31

        Right

    16. DCDan Carlin32:31

        ... for 20 minutes off the cuff anymore." He said, "Do you really care so much about..." So I mean, there was a process of me embracing this new opportunity wholeheartedly in a way that said, what do we need to do in this kind of venue to do the best show in this venue? And s- forget the idea that you have to worry about-

    17. SPSpeaker32:49

        Mm-hmm

    18. DCDan Carlin32:49

        ... I gotta go back to radio someday, so I better do... You know? And once we did that, there was not only a liberation, but unfortunately maybe for the listeners, an extended ver- I mean, we'd get longer and longer, and these shows just got so, um... I mean, like, when I do six-hour shows, I don't wanna do a six-hour show. That's not a, that's not a feature-

    19. SPSpeaker33:05

        [laughs]

    20. DCDan Carlin33:05

        ... that's a bug.

    21. SPSpeaker33:06

        [laughs]

    22. DCDan Carlin33:06

        Um, but if I had to record them all without stopping, there would be no six-hour shows. There might not be 40-minute shows. So m- the way it's changed is, is the embracing of the techniques of how to do this, which, you know, we're learning. Like, one of the things I talk to other big podcasters about is we kinda try to share the information because there are no metrics, right? So you go, what are you guys seeing, and how do you make money, and how is this working for you? And the funny thing is is that if you looked at all the top podcasts and say, "How do you make money?" They actually have different models, because it's really tied to what you do and the kind of production you have. I mean, for example, I get out, I'm ashamed to say, about, uh, 2.5 shows a year at this point, history shows. [laughs] Uh, if I had to live off advertising, and I won't do more than one ad per show, okay, well, you can't do that. But if you do three shows a week like Joe Rogan does, and you could do four or five ads per show, that's a viable monetary solution for you. So we actually all have different kinds of approaches.

    23. SPSpeaker34:04

        Mm-hmm.

    24. DCDan Carlin34:04

        So we sell the old history shows.

    25. SPSpeaker34:06

        Right.

    26. DCDan Carlin34:06

        After a couple years, take them off the free feed, and we sell them. Well, most people have different kinds of shows.

    27. SPSpeaker34:11

        Mm.

    28. DCDan Carlin34:11

        These are evergreen, right? They're, they're as good when you get them a year from now as they were when we released them.

    29. SPSpeaker34:16

        Mm-hmm.

    30. DCDan Carlin34:16

        If they suck, they suck just as bad.
14. 35:47 – 40:06

    Education role and "audio footnotes": building trust without being a historian

    1. SPSpeaker35:47

       Right. And, and we talked earlier about how, uh, some of this content is so appealing 'cause it feels like you're, you're filling a, uh, a void potentially in the, in the education that, that a lot of your listeners have, uh, in terms of getting the context of the history, uh, that you describe. How do you view your role in, in the broader education story?

    2. DCDan Carlin36:08

       Yeah, I'm uncomfortable with that. Um, and I'm un- I'm uncomfortable with it because I did the... I was a history major, as I said. And, um, one thing a history major with a BA in history knows is that you're not a historian, right? And, and, [laughs] really understand that really well. So I'm having dinner with my mother-in-law one day, and I always give her credit for this, 'cause I'm doing the political podcast at the time, and I'm, I'm regaling her with one of my wonderful dinnertime stories which are bloody and horrible, and they sound a lot like the podcast. And I think as a way to dissuade me from talking like that at dinner, she said, "Why don't you do a podcast about this?" And I said, "'Cause I'm not qualified."

    3. SPSpeaker36:39

       Mm.

    4. DCDan Carlin36:39

       I said, "I'm, I'm not a historian. I can't, I can't teach history." She says, "I didn't realize you had to have a PhD to tell stories." This is the first time the storytelling thing came up. And I went, "Hmm." I said, "Okay, that's an interesting point." And, and then I thought, "Well, okay, well, how do you tell this story?" So if you go listen to the first history podcast we ever did, I think it's 15 minutes long, uh, shows you what I was thinking at the time. We thought we would do a show just talking about all the weird stuff in a story. But we weren't gonna tell you about the story, 'cause we assumed you'd show up as a history fan, you'd know the story.

    5. SPSpeaker37:12

       Mm.

    6. DCDan Carlin37:12

       So if I'm talking about Alexander the Great and Hitler, which I was in the first show, I assume you know that. So we just talked about the weird things, right? So the feedback starts coming in, and people are saying, "Yeah, we like the, these twisty, weird twilight zone things you say, but we don't know the story."

    7. SPSpeaker37:27

       Hmm.

    8. DCDan Carlin37:28

       So you kind of go, "Okay, well I guess I gotta give enough of the story so that you could enjoy the twilight zone things." And slowly but surely, that leads to us telling more of the story. So we had to figure out why on earth you should trust me telling you the story, and so we had to invent things. Um, one of the things we invented, um, 'cause I think we're the only one who does it, 'cause I can't imagine anybody needs it, we call them audio footnotes. So if I was writing a book, and I'm just Joe Blow with a BA in history, why should you trust me? I'm gonna say a fact in the book, and then I'm gonna have a little footnote at the bottom that says, "Well, I got this information from somebody who you should trust," and you can go look it up yourself. And there was nothing comparable to that in the audio space. And so that's when we started quoting people. And once again, you gotta be careful about doing that too. You don't want anybody's work to be, uh, uh, plagiarized or anything. But you want to make sure though that, that when I say, "This happened," that I give you somebody who you can believe.

    9. SPSpeaker38:22

       Mm-hmm.

    10. DCDan Carlin38:22

        You know, so and so said this happened, and then you integrate that into the story. Now, all of us understand that every historian self-selects. And so just because historian A says this happened, that doesn't mean historian B agrees with them. So then you get competing audio footnotes. So we developed this idea of, okay, well, this historian says this, and this one says that. Well, this turned out to be great.

    11. SPSpeaker38:42

        Mm.

    12. DCDan Carlin38:42

        We had no idea that people didn't get, 'cause they're not history majors, they haven't spent a lot of time in this, they don't realize that there's not one view of history. So one guy wrote me, and he had a great line. He said, "I didn't realize there was like an MSNBC, Fox News version of history," and there always was.

    13. SPSpeaker38:57

        [laughs] Right.

    14. DCDan Carlin38:57

        And, um, and so this is something that in history they call historiography, right? The practice of writing history, the practice of, uh, selecting sources, because there's always a selection process, right? And this is something historians have been criticized forever. So once we started highlighting this element of history, people were like, "I had no idea." But it became something that was part of the audio footnotes. And so learning how to do this gig, and I, I would suggest we're still learning how to do this gig, um, required us to invent ways to get around our own limitations.

    15. SPSpeaker39:27

        Mm-hmm.

    16. DCDan Carlin39:28

        Limitation number one is I'm a storyteller, I guess, and I know I'm not a historian, so how do I assure you-

    17. SPSpeaker39:33

        Right

    18. DCDan Carlin39:33

        ... that you're getting something that you can trust? I quote somebody who's valid and who you should trust, and then I quote somebody who disagrees with them who's also valid-

    19. SPSpeaker39:40

        Right

    20. DCDan Carlin39:40

        ... and you should trust. So, um, learning how to do this job.

    21. SPSpeaker39:44

        Makes sense. I, so I have really enjoyed getting a chance to ask you, uh, some of the pressing questions on my mind. I'd like to open it up to the audience.

    22. DCDan Carlin39:50

        Yeah.

    23. SPSpeaker39:51

        Uh, if, if you'd like to ask Dan a question, uh, please step up to the mic.

    24. DCDan Carlin39:55

        Love to hear from any of you.

    25. SPSpeaker39:56

        Yeah. And just line up behind the mic.

    26. DCDan Carlin40:00

        [laughs] Thank you for coming, by the way.

    27. SPSpeaker40:04

        Perfect. If we could get started right there.

15. 40:06 – 54:24

    Audience Q&A: topic selection, storytelling structure, and interpreting overwhelming sources

    1. SPSpeaker40:06

       Hey, Dan. Huge fan.

    2. DCDan Carlin40:07

       Thank you.

    3. SPSpeaker40:07

       Uh, I have a serious question, but just first, i- is Ben up there with you right now?

    4. SPSpeaker40:12

       [laughs]

    5. DCDan Carlin40:13

       Did you ever wanna meet him?

    6. SPSpeaker40:14

       Uh, there.

    7. DCDan Carlin40:14

       He's been here the whole time.

    8. SPSpeaker40:15

       Okay. Just checking.

    9. SPSpeaker40:16

       [laughs]

    10. SPSpeaker40:17

        Good. So my question's kind of about how you pick what you talk about. I, in July, I was actually sitting on Cemetery Ridge looking over Pickett's Charge-

    11. DCDan Carlin40:25

        Wow

    12. SPSpeaker40:25

        ... and thinking about blueprints for Armageddon, 'cause that was a huge cannonade, and it was a huge artillery action. Uh, well, one, could you please do the Civil War?

    13. DCDan Carlin40:33

        [laughs]

    14. SPSpeaker40:33

        But two, how do you pick? Uh ...

    15. DCDan Carlin40:37

        Well, isn't, first of all, isn't it interesting that all of our shows sound like they would make great heavy metal band names?

    16. SPSpeaker40:43

        Yeah. [laughs]

    17. SPSpeaker40:44

        [laughs]

    18. DCDan Carlin40:45

        You know, here's the problem with that. Um, and, and like a guy wrote me the other day, said, "Would you please talk about 17th century India?"

    19. SPSpeaker40:51

        Mm-hmm.

    20. DCDan Carlin40:52

        And I'm so, it's such a compliment to think that I could speak about 17th century India, because what happens is, is that we have this period of time where I can do research for a program. But it's not enough time for me to educate myself from scratch on anything. So all the topics we pick are things that I have a good foundation on myself. And you know, it's funny, I have a, I have two kids, and one of them has a brain that's a little like mine in terms of how it works. And it's funny, because she'll get into a subject intensely and stay into it for several months or a year, and then move on to something else. But she will remember every single thing she learned about it then, and that's how my mind works. And so all these subjects we talk about on the show are things that I was really into once and have a pretty good foundation about.

    21. SPSpeaker41:32

        Mm-hmm.

    22. DCDan Carlin41:32

        And then what I have to do after that is begin to re-educate myself on all the new stuff that's been discovered or written about since the last time I paid close attention to it. And so all these subjects we talk about are things that I've already been interested in and I know something about. Um, the Civil War has never been an interest of mine 'cause I don't like civil wars. And I don't like civil wars because when I was a military, I still am a military history nut, um, I don't like armies that are fighting each other that are mirror images of each other. This is the silliest thing in the world to base what you're interested on.

    23. SPSpeaker42:01

        [laughs]

    24. DCDan Carlin42:01

        But, but I like the contrast of Greeks against Persians. I don't wanna see Greeks against Greeks. So I'm not gonna talk to you about the Peloponnesian War, 'cause it bores me, right?

    25. SPSpeaker42:08

        [laughs]

    26. DCDan Carlin42:09

        So that's my problem. Civil wars are interesting in a societal sense, but from a military s- sense, I don't wanna watch two armies that are mirror images of each other go at it. So, so people keep thinking, "When are you gonna do the Civil War?" I might do Reconstruction afterwards. I might do the period leading up to it, but I find both of those more interesting than the war itself. I know that's heresy, but ...

    27. SPSpeaker42:27

        [laughs] Thank you. Next question.

    28. SPSpeaker42:31

        I was wondering if you could speak more about the structure you've developed for the stories, and maybe how you take content and put it into buckets to create something that's compelling and hooks listeners.

    29. DCDan Carlin42:41

        Mm-hmm. That's a really good question. And I, I don't know ... I wish I could claim more of a conscious, um, desire. I mean, sometimes I'll sit down and I'll say, you know, "Could we tell this story backwards?" You know what I mean? There's, there's, there's fun ways that you sit down right at the outset and you, and you look at what you wanna say and you say, "Okay, there are multiple ways to tell every story. The most obvious way is the linear way." The problem is that that's a very boring way to tell a story. But, but if the story's very complicated, like, you know, we mentioned the, the First World War, that's a really hard story to follow. So you end up sometimes having to choose the linear option because it's easier to make sense of. But we often do sit down, and the one thing I don't ever wanna do is have a template for this. So sometimes we'll deliberately do something as a way to screw up any idea in your mind that we have a plan, right? [laughs] We're, we're gonna make sure that the last show was like this, so this other one's gonna be like that So that you get this idea that you don't know what's coming and you don't know how we're gonna do it, and it keeps us from getting bored, and keeps it from turning into a formula. So the first thing we do is we look at what we've done lately and say, "Okay, can we do this new one differently than that?" And that's truthfully the part that's most satisfying, 'cause that's create- that's the creative process. And that's when you sit down... And these are really hard to do, needless to say. I mean, six-hour audio is really hard to do. But afterwards, the feeling of satisfaction if people like it-

    30. SPSpeaker44:00

        Mm

Episode duration: 54:45