I had a long drive yesterday, a six-hour drive that became a seven-hour drive with the aid of a well-placed soon-to-be construction zone in South Carolina. I don’t love road trips and never have, but this one was made better through the power of storytelling. As I have written in these posts more than once already, I am an avid podcast listener. A few weeks ago, a new podcast dropped from one of my favorite shows—Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. The shows do not come out at a regular cadence but the episodes are mammoth when they are released. This one is over five and a half hours long at 1x speed, though in the car I listen at 1.3x.

Dan Carlin describes himself as an amateur historian. He reads a large number of sources on a given topic and pieces together his own narrative out of the events, caveating at every step that he is not qualified to make historical judgments and heavily quoting both primary and secondary sources so the episodes remain grounded. His constant self-effacement is equal parts endearing and distracting, but I was a history major myself and I enjoy listening to him quote primary sources from decades or even centuries past as the differences in language help me empathize with the protagonists. He doesn’t shy away from the macabre and this episode about the Atlantic slave trade is no exception. Yes, he wades into a topic that is untouchable for many in our current political climate, but he never veers into contemporary politics. Given the length of the episode, he has the scope to approach the narrative from multiple perspectives at each phase of the chronology and he does so in a way that can have you disagreeing with yourself as different, sometimes contrasting ideas are presented in quick succession. He has done the same for other topics too, and if you have a long road trip this summer without kids in the car I encourage you to download an episode and give it a try.

Will listening to the episode compel me to do a deep dive into the Haitian revolution after listening to some stories about the horrors it wrought? Probably not, but even so I now have at least a basic understanding of a few of the major themes. While that may be just enough knowledge to be dangerous, it is only such if one forgoes all intellectual humility in the manner of cable news prognosticators. This high-level overview style is one of the things I enjoy so much about podcasts. Yes, I have listened to podcast series that go into much greater detail (here’s looking at you, History of Rome), but many of my favorites give a glimpse into an idea, a perspective, a place. If I want to go deeper, then all I need do is visit the show notes and explore the sources cited and resources listed there. If I don’t, then I can move onto the next topic—podcasts make up one big intellectual buffet.