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These are great Declan, been really enjoying them. It's a bit shameful though that after 4 years at Glasgow uni it was the Idle Thumbs forums that finally got me to tune into Subcity Radio!

Haha! Amazing. Glad you're enjoying them. I don't think many people listen via subcity anyway but it's nice to have the radio connection. I think I've been shuffled to some middle of the night slot now so they can keep the studio free. (I record them all myself & just upload later)

Are you still in the city? I'll buy you a beer.

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Are you still in the city? I'll buy you a beer.

 

Sadly not at the moment, I miss it dearly! In any case, the beers'd be on me: free entertainment AND alcohol? No one gets to be that generous.

 

Guess I should actually recommend a podcast while I'm here. It's concluded now but I really enjoyed the Guardian's The Biggest Story in the World which was a behind the scenes look at the conception, execution and reception of their climate change campaign earlier this year. The topic alone would be plenty interesting in it's own right but it's also a really candid insight into their editorial process with lots of internal politics etc.

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Hey, the History of Britain is actually pretty good. The guy is a great story teller, although he is obviously taking a few liberties with the facts. I think I'm liking it so much because it's basically the history of rome told from a different angle.

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Hey, the History of Britain is actually pretty good. The guy is a great story teller, although he is obviously taking a few liberties with the facts. I think I'm liking it so much because it's basically the history of rome told from a different angle.

 

How far are you? It's mostly with the Roman conquest and occupation of Britain where I started feeling like I had to quit, because Jamie was projecting at the same time the most charitable interpretation of native Britons' motivations and the most proto-nationalist effect of their actions (to the point that I was reminded of the whole "What have the Romans ever done for us" bit from Life of Brian)... and it just isn't in the sources, it's in his head, which is... I don't know. It's not good history, even if it makes for a good story. I put up with it for about a dozen episodes and then I had to quit, because he was already intimating that he felt the same about the Saxon settlement and (simply put) I didn't want to face the Danelaw or the Norman invasion being told with such a spin. Pan-Celticism is totally made up, anyway.

 

For me, at least, the truly cool and interesting thing about Britain is that it's this unique melting pot of peoples and cultures created through repeated invasions (the original henge-building Neolithic inhabitants, the P-Celts, the Q-Celts, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes, the Danes and Norwegians, the Normans and French... and technically the Dutch and the Hannoverians, I guess) and it's really limiting for a historian to identify "real" Britain with one of those groups (in Jamie's case, the P-Celts) and to treat the rest as interlopers "ruining" (or at least "disrupting") the native culture. Hopefully it won't be such a deal-breaker for you, and if he's not like that all the way through, I'd sure like to know.

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I'm still in Roman Britain, around Caracalla. His view is very pro-native, but I've just assumed it's because the story so far is very Rome-focussed, and thus he's trying to give at least some reason for the podcast to be called "The History of Britain" rather than "The History of Roman Occupation of Britain." 

 

I like history in two ways - the great man narrative has always been interesting to me because it gives insight into the intrigue and machinations of the time, but I also like how his telling is more of a...romanisation. Or more a dramatisation. It's entertaining - which is why I'm listening.

 

I feel as long as I know he's taking a particular stance, and his own biases which are clearly on display, I can look past it if it's entertaining enough. 

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What?  99% Invisible is one of my favs because the episodes are consistently short and tightly edited/reported.

 

I didn't explain very well. I don't like all the (my vocab is lacking in this regard so sorry) cuts back and forth between host and story, the asking question and answering a questions, the way that instead of just telling me the book title, the host says a third, the author says a third and then they both say the last third. The content is great and it is a lot less oppressive than Radiolab or TAM, but i can't get over that stuff unfortunately.

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re: 99% Invisible's editing

 

They definitely are consistently short and tightly edited/reported, which I appreciate, but because they're so short, the unusually high ratio of advertising/begging-for-money stands out and is all the more annoying.

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They spend a long time on the advertising and general show stuff but I'm averse to call it begging to ask for donations to a show that you get for free.

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Fine asking for money whatever you want to call it. I guess that's important...

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I'm still in Roman Britain, around Caracalla. His view is very pro-native, but I've just assumed it's because the story so far is very Rome-focussed, and thus he's trying to give at least some reason for the podcast to be called "The History of Britain" rather than "The History of Roman Occupation of Britain."

 

I guess? I admit, I brindled when he made that statement. He had already done an excellent (if somewhat idyllic) history of pre-Roman Britain, which covered all of the sources not Greco-Roman in origin, but then he proceeds to read the Greco-Roman sources in a way that attempts to strip them of what he sees as their Greco-Roman bias and get the "true" picture of what was happening in Britain. As far as I can tell, his only guides for this endeavor are his own deeply-felt but nonetheless modern beliefs about what is British and what is Roman (and never the twain shall meet), which is even more galling when the legions withdraw from Britain and Jamie talks about the native Britons "taking back" their land and culture, carefully avoiding the term "Romano-British" and any implications whatsoever that Rome's three and a half centuries of rule might have had more of an influence on Britain moving forward than tribal polities that were dead and gone when the oldest living grandfather's grandfather was not yet born.

 

There is really good literature out there (seriously, Jones' work is tremendous and I think about it on a monthly basis, at least) suggesting that the Romanization of the British Isles was uniquely incomplete in some ways, leading to a sub-Roman culture that amalgamated with the invading Anglo-Saxons in a fashion that the Gallo- and Hispano-Romans mostly didn't. But the way he is doing it, positing a pan-Celtic consciousness that lay dormant during fifteen generations of Roman occupation, Jamie is engaging in historical fiction, plain and simple, and it's every bit as silly as a historian writing about the history of what would become the United States of America as a continuity only briefly interrupted by British occupation, 1607-1776.

 

I'm often frustrated by the whole mentality of "Biases or inaccuracies don't bother me, as long as I'm aware of them" when it comes to amateur history. It's incredibly toxic at times, if only for how it disregards hard work by trained professionals in preference to entertainment value, and it feels like only the social sciences, psychology and history in particular, have to deal with it on such a level. Basically, every day is "we found an anomaly in the transmitted light of a distant star, please don't call it an alien megastructure yet" day, in astronomy terms. I don't mean to be taking my issues out on you (and I'm sorry, because that's exactly what I'm doing, looking over what I've written), I just have it as a bugbear of mine when there's an implicit dichotomy between good history and interesting history.

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New Hardcore History!

 

As rambling and digressive as ever, but man I'll take it.

 

I've added a bunch of podcasts in the last 9-10 months. These have stuck (or come back around)

 

99% invisible (added and removed multiple times)

Hardcore History

No Such Thing As A Fish

Planet Money

Lexicon Valley

Radio Lab

Reply All

Advice Hot Dog

Crate and Crowbar (I wish this was mixed louder, hard for me to hear it sometimes and also they are super British which is tough sometimes)

Limetown

What's Tech

You Are Not So Smart

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As far as I can tell, his only guides for this endeavor are his own deeply-felt but nonetheless modern beliefs about what is British and what is Roman (and never the twain shall meet), which is even more galling when the legions withdraw from Britain and Jamie talks about the native Britons "taking back" their land and culture, carefully avoiding the term "Romano-British" and any implications whatsoever that Rome's three and a half centuries of rule might have had more of an influence on Britain moving forward than tribal polities that were dead and gone when the oldest living grandfather's grandfather was not yet born.

 

 

I'm often frustrated by the whole mentality of "Biases or inaccuracies don't bother me, as long as I'm aware of them" when it comes to amateur history. It's incredibly toxic at times, if only for how it disregards hard work by trained professionals in preference to entertainment value, and it feels like only the social sciences, psychology and history in particular, have to deal with it on such a level. Basically, every day is "we found an anomaly in the transmitted light of a distant star, please don't call it an alien megastructure yet" day, in astronomy terms. I don't mean to be taking my issues out on you (and I'm sorry, because that's exactly what I'm doing, looking over what I've written), I just have it as a bugbear of mine when there's an implicit dichotomy between good history and interesting history.

 

He uses the term "Romano-British almost exclusively for the past 4 episodes, although that's past where you commented on before.

 

I absolutely disagree with the idea that ignoring facts for entertainment is only present in social sciences. It's everywhere. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7410/fig_tab/488151a_T1.html

 

I just think that I'd rather be exposed to a biased romanticisation than give up trying to read a dry factual documentation. Are you telling me you go read the source material for subjects in which you have a lay understanding at best? 

 

Edit: Also, I hate reading, so even if there's a non-biased, well written account, I'd never get through it.

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He uses the term "Romano-British almost exclusively for the past 4 episodes, although that's past where you commented on before.

 

I absolutely disagree with the idea that ignoring facts for entertainment is only present in social sciences. It's everywhere. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7410/fig_tab/488151a_T1.html

 

Yeah, I should have refined my meaning a bit. I guess I mean more that, in history, the fandom is often open about and proud of its distortions and untruths. So many people who claim to be passionate about history take as given that they need to lie at least a little, by omission if nothing else, to make history interesting. That's different to me than mainstream publications punching up the findings of science studies because the strictures of the discipline discourage too much speculation about implications. You don't get a science podcast saying, "Yeah, I'm going to pretend that everything after Newton doesn't exist because it makes my explanation of physics too complicated." They're a science podcast, they're there to get into complicated explanations. They're there to take real-world messiness, present it to you in full, and then help you to see a little order in its midst.

 

That's really what frustrates me. Telling a good story is one thing, but inserting or omitting details in order to create heroes and villains out of actual people is crossing a line. Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall is an amazing book, a truly humbling piece of research and composition, but it's not history. It's fiction, and so is an unfortunate (and, in my mind, unnecessary) chunk of The British History Podcast.

 

I just think that I'd rather be exposed to a biased romanticisation than give up trying to read a dry factual documentation. Are you telling me you go read the source material for subjects in which you have a lay understanding at best? 

 

Edit: Also, I hate reading, so even if there's a non-biased, well written account, I'd never get through it.

 

Yeah, I'm sorry if I come off like I'm attacking you for listening to The British History Podcast. I'm not, I'm just frustrated by the state of popular history, especially with the advent of Wikipedia and the internet in general.

 

The truth is, there are tons of engaging audio lectures out there on historical topics by people like my advisor, even just on Audible, but mostly historians have been slow to adapt to the newer format and trappings of podcasts. Mostly, we're too busy (well, I am, at least) and so passionate amateurs lead the way. Sometimes they're careful and humble, like Mike Duncan, and sometimes... I don't really know what Jamie is trying to do with his podcast, but he seems unapologetic about his biases (in almost a "c'mon, of course I'm rooting for the Celts, what did you expect" kind of way) and that's literally incomprehensible to me, because the very first thing I was taught in my profession is that my opinions are meaningless at best and harmful at worst if I don't have evidence to back them up. We left that kind of thing behind with Edward Gibbon and it kills me to see it being revived because someone's identifying too closely with his subject matter two thousand years dead.

 

If you're not a reader, I don't really have an alternative, though. There are so many amazing books out there, but if every book is boring to you, no mater the content, then the best you're going to get really is Jamie's historical fan-fiction about Celtae Invictae. Maybe that'll change in five or ten more years, as more internet-savvy historians enter the field, but who knows.

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Incidentally I'll be doing a live version of the show this Thursday at Gamecity in Nottingham. I wouldn't expect anyone from the forums will be there but I'm inspired by that coincidence.

http://gamecity102015.sched.org/event/762ba41ad79f6be2e794041249651db4#.Vi-7h1_fXCQ

I could be mistaken, but I think forumite Nachimir is involved in that in some capacity, or at least was at some point. His website mentions it, anyway. I haven't seen him around here much recently, mind.

I didn't explain very well. I don't like all the (my vocab is lacking in this regard so sorry) cuts back and forth between host and story, the asking question and answering a questions, the way that instead of just telling me the book title, the host says a third, the author says a third and then they both say the last third. The content is great and it is a lot less oppressive than Radiolab or TAM, but i can't get over that stuff unfortunately.

I'm similarly ill-equipped to explain it, but I'm also slightly bothered by the production on those sorts of programmed. I think I find it overly showy. I wonder whether it's a cultural thing – I don't know about Ireland, but similar programming on Radio 4 tends to be presented quite differently.

Honestly, I think a lot of what irritates me is conspicuous radio voices. I'm not a fan of radio voices. It seems light a slightly conceited affectation.

I do enjoy the occasional 99% Invisible, though, despite all that. The subject matter is often good, and when it's just a normal person with something interesting to say in a way you'd actually say it to a person, it's fine.

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Honestly, I think a lot of what irritates me is conspicuous radio voices. I'm not a fan of radio voices. It seems light a slightly conceited affectation.

 

To be fair, sometimes it happens when you're talking into a mic and you don't even realize it!

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Oh, I'm sure. I imagine all the people who use them are lovely and appropriately humble and all that stuff, and it depends on how your stuff is set up and maybe some of them just have deep voices naturally. That's just the reaction it elicits in me.

That said, there are styles of radio where that's less prevalent. If you're running a show and it has intense radio voice going on, even if it weren't deliberate in the first place, at some point you've noticed it and decided not to do anything about it, like moving the mic away slightly or whatever (not an audio engineer!). Which isn't to say that people running shows should do that – it's an entirely valid aesthetic – it's just something that puts me off a little.

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It doesn't bother me that much normally, but I listen to a couple podcasts where there's a group of people who just sound like normal people having a conversation and sometimes there'll be a guest who does do the radio voice and it really stands out.

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I'm still not sure why it matters if I'm listening to something for entertainment, as long as I know what the biases are. It doesn't damage other's work, and if I find something interesting, I'm far more likely to go read an actual source. I liked Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, I knew it was fiction, but I ended up searching for stuff on the dissolution of the monasteries. 

 

I'm also not sure if I'd want to listen to a lecturer or a scientific publication when it comes to history. I listen to the Nature podcast for my science news, but that's the odd one out. Science (AAAS podcast) is awful and so incredibly dry. The PNAS podcast is also really dry (although better than Science which has the host repeat their name every 2 minutes and drives me crazy).

 

I also don't listen to pop-science podcasts (and history of britain is essentially pop-history) because 1) I'm not interested in physics which they all seem to go on and on about, and 2) they over simplify stuff that I am interested in to the point that it's not worth hearing their interpretation, or I already know the more in-depth version because I read the paper.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm not going to stop listening to it because it's fun and that's what I want from a history podcast. It's well made, and I'm learning stuff!

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If you want a 'fun' science podcast try The Infinite Monkey Cage. How Stuff Works tends to do decent accessible science topics too.

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I've been meaning to recommend Hello from the Magic Tavern in this thread for a while, but I keep forgetting. 

 

It's a weekly worldbuilding podcast run by a mix of people who work at Jackbox Games and improv comedians from Chicago (kind of like Nightvale, but with multiple hosts and a much lighter tone). The premise is that Arnie Niekamp, producer at Jackbox, falls through a portal behind a Burger King and ends up stuck in a magical world called Foon. Each week he interviews someone different like a talking flower or a bridge troll along with two regular co-hosts, a shapeshifter/talking badger named Chunt and a wizard named Usidore. It's probably best to start from the beginning if you're interested. The jokes can be corny, but it has been one of my favorite new podcasts of the last year or so.

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I also don't listen to pop-science podcasts (and history of britain is essentially pop-history) because they over simplify stuff that I am interested in to the point that it's not worth hearing their interpretation, or I already know the more in-depth version because I read the paper.

 

Hah! That's basically why I can't listen to a lot of history podcasts, "oversimplification" usually being "I bet you've never heard of [historical person], they were the biggest badass of [historical period]" in this case.

 

And I'm not saying you shouldn't enjoy it. I'm just frustrated that there aren't better options with less compromises, and more than a little disappointed in Jamie that he loves history enough to make an extremely slick podcast about it but not enough to treat all of history's participants with the same level of enthusiasm and understanding as his hometown heroes. It's my sincere hope that the process of researching and writing The British History Podcast broadens his horizons somewhat, but who knows.

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I've been meaning to recommend Hello from the Magic Tavern in this thread for a while, but I keep forgetting. 

 

It's a weekly worldbuilding podcast run by a mix of people who work at Jackbox Games and improv comedians from Chicago (kind of like Nightvale, but with multiple hosts and a much lighter tone). The premise is that Arnie Niekamp, producer at Jackbox, falls through a portal behind a Burger King and ends up stuck in a magical world called Foon. Each week he interviews someone different like a talking flower or a bridge troll along with two regular co-hosts, a shapeshifter/talking badger named Chunt and a wizard named Usidore. It's probably best to start from the beginning if you're interested. The jokes can be corny, but it has been one of my favorite new podcasts of the last year or so.

 

That podcast is very good. Chunt has been giving Arnie such a doing the last month or so and I am loving it.

 

Hah! That's basically why I can't listen to a lot of history podcasts, "oversimplification" usually being "I bet you've never heard of [historical person], they were the biggest badass of [historical period]" in this case.

 

And I'm not saying you shouldn't enjoy it. I'm just frustrated that there aren't better options with less compromises, and more than a little disappointed in Jamie that he loves history enough to make an extremely slick podcast about it but not enough to treat all of history's participants with the same level of enthusiasm and understanding. It's my sincere hope that the process of researching and writing The British History Podcast broadens his horizons somewhat, but who knows.

 

There is a history of England podcast that might be more to your liking. Starts with a focus on the Wessex. Seems less pop history than British history or at least less slick and more dry

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Ah man, I wish I'd seen that Gamecity post earlier, I would have saught him out. It was good though! I was a bit rubbish but my guests were good. I'll hopefuly get a copy up soon if the audio holds up.

 

I have only just started the History of Britain podcast and it's the exact thing I've been looking for for a while so I'm very much enjoying it.

 

Speaking of the history of Britain, I was surpirsed to learn that one of the main designers of the first three Uncharted games was from about 20 miles from where I grew up. Checkpoints #21 with Richard Lemarchand - declandineen.com/checkpoints

 

Thanks, you're right, it was a sweet segue.

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