‘Doing’ history for your ears — Australia’s first investigative history podcast
History Lab is 2ser’s latest hit podcast, where we explore the gaps between us and the past.
The History Lab podcast combines the skills and knowhow of two distinct disciplines: historians and audio producers. Those who record history and those who tell stories through sound.
The podcast is produced as a collaboration between the Australian Centre for Public History at the University of Technology Sydney and award-winning audio producers from one of Sydney’s largest community radio stations, 2ser 107.3 FM.
This marriage of disciplines seemed like an obvious match. After all, journalism is often labelled the first draft of history. But like any marriage there have been some learning curves along the way. Some real work went into understanding the intricacies and conventions of each other’s profession.
We’ve just wrapped History Lab’s first five-episode season. With more than 27,000 downloads (and counting), featuring in Apple podcasts ‘New and Noteworthy’ section and rocketing up the Australian podcast charts to sit comfortably in the top 30s, there is clearly an appetite for the type of historical narrative being told in History Lab.
The project first started in August 2017 when I met Tamson Pietsch, the director of the Australian Centre for Public History, in the 2ser studios. Tamson, who now hosts History Lab, wanted to make something new, calling it “an audio experiment where we ‘do’ history for your ears”.
When researching the existing market, we found that historical podcasts tend to fall into three categories:
- public talks and lectures,
- talking heads that position themselves as the ‘authority’ on a particular subject, or
- longform shows that present history as stories — often set up as a mystery to be solved, or framed as untold stories of people or groups previously “left out” of mainstream histories.
All of these types of history podcasts can be great and interesting in their own right, but many of them skip over the process of ‘doing’ history — the reliance on sources and the difficulties of finding them, the process of interpretation and the wrestling with what is even possible to know in the first place.
As we made History Lab I came to understand that historians tend to see history as something quite different to the past. History, as the University of Cambridge academic Mary Beard puts it, “exists in the gap between us and [the past]”. It’s how historians try to make sense of what has happened by examining the traces the past has left behind. Beard’s view of history became our tagline for the series and made the aim for our podcast clear.
History Lab is about drawing listeners into the thrill of historical research, with all its uncertainties.
History is a process that is full of questions and interpretation and disagreement and uncertainty — and that makes it perfect fodder for a podcast. Listeners join us as we enter dusty archives, hunt down rare books in the library stacks and hear the hum of microfiche machines — all while our audio producers and collaborating historians struggle to make sense of what these sources actually mean.
Audio offers particular opportunities for conveying the experience of ‘doing’ history because it’s an intimate medium that can evocatively convey a story. The podcast enables history-makers to unmask the process of investigation and meaning-making that sits behind the narrative.
During the making of this series I found many similarities between history and making audio/podcasts — both are temporal, emotional and transportative.
How the History Lab model works
At History Lab, we think there is room for a new kind of history podcast in the Australian aural landscape. The first season was guided by a distinct approach:
We begin with the questions of the present
History Lab episodes begin with a small thing, a ‘Trojan horse’, to transport us into the story. It can be an assumed fact or an observation from the present that provokes a question that needs unpacking. For example, History Lab season one kicks off with an episode on Lindy Chamberlain and the afterlife of evidence.
For the first time we hear from Lindy Chamberlain Creighton, not just about her trying legal ordeal, but about a unique discipline in grief that emerged in the shadow of one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Australian history. Collaborating Historian Professor Katherine Biber asks, “what has happened to all the evidence on which Lindy’s trials turned?” and History Lab producers and collaborating historians hit the archives to find out what’s left behind in the wake of the case that divided the nation.
We trust our audience to think with us
History Lab assumes listeners are intelligent, interested and able to think with us. We make transparent the process of interpretation and investigation, asking questions about what sources might mean, why they were made and where they might be found. You hear historians and producers walking down corridors, turning pages and looking for things we can’t find, sometimes pursuing dead ends and sometimes just getting lucky. We also try to amplify the emotions and the chase as historians search through the archives and seek answers to their research questions.
We (historians and audio producers) are vulnerable and transparent
“We leave the breadcrumbs in the forest”, so that others can see how we proceeded. This can often be a challenge for the historian, not being the voice of authority and getting to neatly present the history they’ve made, but the listener gets a richer and more honest work for it.
This approach to podcasting sees the listener not as a passive recipient of an interesting tale, but as an integral part of the process of meaning-making. It exposes how history gets made and what sits behind historians’ claims about the past.
History Lab provides a space for complexity and contestation. Through the magic of sound, it makes history-making a vivid and sensory experience. It is a tiny space in which, for roughly 30 minutes, thinking and making meaning together is enacted.
We want listeners to finish an episode with a sense that they have made connections themselves. We hope they will leave with tools that help them to see in a different light and perhaps also with the inspiration to go off and do some historical exploring of their own.
How does the historian and audio producer collaboration work?
Collaborating historians pitch published or unpublished academic work to History Lab. (To find out more about pitching for upcoming seasons head to https://historylab.net/)
The historian is paired up with a producer who works with them to build their episode (this process can vary depending on the timeline and the historian’s availability).
- The audio producer gets familiar with the research and does further background research
- The audio producer interviews the historian multiple times, often on location (we find in their home or a location they choose can often work well for getting good tape).
- The audio producer works with the historian to find sources, and talent that can act as voices in the audio documentary, this can be other academics or people with lived experience.
- The audio producer (and sometimes a historian) conduct interviews with the identified talent for the podcast
- The audio producer develops a script that has multiple feedback rounds built into it for the historian to approve and fact check. The script is also shaped by the History Lab host and executive producer.
- The executive producer coaches script reads and in-studio sessions between the host and collaborating historian.
- Towards the end of the script development a sound designer is brought in to start scoring the podcast, using music and atmosphere, where appropriate archive sound and voice actors are used to read primary source letters or speeches, building emotion and life into the once still academic work.
Working with historians has been a really rewarding experience. They often have great stories, are natural diggers of information, and need just a little help to shape their research into a rich sonic document that is accessible to the general public in the form of a podcast.
As journalists and audio producers we bring a bag of tricks including knowing how to structure a story, where to include the use of historical detail (and where to drop some detail in order to help move the story along), how to write for the ear and to a narrative arc, as well as how to work in a team. Having multiple people working on one production is common in an audio producers world — this can sometimes be a new experience for historians who often conduct a lot of independent research, spending hours in the archive alone.
For some historians giving up this control and letting go of being the ‘authoritative’ voice can be scary. But this not only builds a stronger and more entertaining episode, it allows for the creation of something new — for the work of historians to be heard in a completely new way and an extra layer of meaning-making to be achieved, which is what history is about, after all.
Why does a ‘making history’ podcast matter?
In a post-truth world of fake news, showing what lies behind claims to knowledge about the past is essential if those claims are to be believed. Secondly, personal experience is transformative. Abstractions and stories must be taken on trust, but lived experience is direct and persuasive. Hearing steps echoing in empty corridors, planes taking off as we fly out in search of personal accounts, and historians crying in the archives opens up the experience of history-making to all who listen.
In these two ways, the History Lab podcast seeks to contribute to public discourse. As host and historian Tamson Pietsch says, “History Lab is premised on the notion that doing the work of thinking and making meaning together is central for a good society”.
History Lab is about making history for your ears that is accessible, well-researched and entertaining. It beams a spotlight on how history gets made, allows the listener to hopefully learn something new and if we have done our jobs properly, connects a small story to a bigger idea and theme.
To subscribe and download History Lab go to Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from. Season Two is in production now and will be out in time for your Christmas holiday road trips.
Got a great idea and want to make some history? Pitch us an episode https://historylab.net/pitch/
Emma Lancaster is the executive producer of History Lab (season one). She was the executive producer of The Wire, community radio’s flagship national current affairs program, and the executive producer of 2ser’s first podcast Just Words (2017). Emma is currently an audio producer for Unravel, Blood on the Tracks, the ABC’s True Crime Unit, and has worked as a researcher and fact-checker for Radio National on Trace and Background Briefing.
