I prefer YouTube as the platform but I’m also open to suggestions elsewhere.
Basically I’m looking for long-ish format episodes I can listen to while doing something else. Ideally the host isn’t just a voice reading a text, but someone relatable or that shows enthusiasm and/or has a personal take/ humor about the topic they’re talking about.
I sometimes listen to Simon Whistler’s videos on a variety of topics, in case you know him, I find he’s entertaining enough and his writers are usually good but I’m looking for some more variety.
I’ve tried Stuff You Should Know and the Oologies series and while the content seems well researched, I found them a bit boring for me.
Got any recommendations?
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History.
He tries to look at history through the eyes of people at that time and not from a distance. E.g. instead of talking about great strategies etc he focuses on what it meant to be raided by Ghengis Khan.
I know you said no voice-reading-text and wanted personality, but for my money nothing is better background listening than History of English. You can listen to the whole narrative of an episode or just pick up some cool etymology here and there.
Milo Rossi, aka Miniminuteman, if you’re looking for personality and enthusiasm.
- Fall of Civilizations
- Dan Carlin
- The Rest is History
- Cautionary Tales
- The Delicious Legacy
Michael Troy has the uncreatively name American Revolution Podcast which is basically a full episode per event/battle between the French Indian War beyond the signing of the Constitution. Leans more history than entertainment but there’s some deadpan humor in there.
Oldest Stories Podcast
History with Cy
Both doing Mesopotamian antiquity, and Egypt as well for Cy. Both on Youtube.
just a voice reading a text […] Simon Whistler
The ultimate voice reading a text IMO. Specifically, a voice reading a text that it has clearly never seen before and where the producers have not even bothered to explain how to pronounce the names in it. IMO Simon Whistler is like Justin Bieber - essentially a product of the YouTube algorithm. In this case, a hipstery guy with an amazing beard and a posh authoritative accent talking confidently about… whatever. To me it just screams inauthenticity. But it’s obviously what people want so congrats to him for riding the gravy train.
Honestly that’s part of the fun of it. I love when he reacts to the information incredulously, “What? Is that really it??”
I prefer YouTube as the platform but I’m also open to suggestions elsewhere.
Honestly, I think that most video on YouTube isn’t really designed for background use. Not a technical limitation of the platform, just that most users are going to be sitting and staring at the material, and so that’s what they target.
Podcasts, on the other hand, tend to be aimed at exactly that “background user” — they make a lot of design decisions, like not moving super-quickly through content, repeating themselves, stuff like that. It makes listening to a podcast really irritatingly slow if you’re doing nothing but that, but if you’re driving somewhere or whatever, it works well, I think.
You mention history — if you’re willing to spend money on commercial content, The Great Courses series has audio lecture series from professional lecturers; I think that the format works well for history, and they have variety of history lectures that I think are pretty solid. You won’t have to deal with ads. That’s probably more intensive than the typical podcast; I like them when doing long drives, but occasionally need to skip back a bit if I get distracted by something else in the actual drive.
I can list some non-commercial podcasts that I enjoy, but I think that that’s very much dependent on where your interests lie. Like, I tend to focus on military history and maybe some light law and economics stuff, and I don’t know if that’s really up your alley. Maybe NPR Planet Money. Basic introduction to lots of economic topics, keeping things pretty connected to the real world. Fits your “upbeat” ask, but each episode isn’t all that long. There are a lot of them, though…
Fall of Civilizations podcast has a YT channel. It’s excellent.
I absolutely love Throughline. They have some very interesting content and I like how they fuse it together with with a good soundstage, it can be quite cinematic. The only two downsides: You kind of have to pay attention Some episodes can be a bit depressing, so I’ve heard from people I’ve recommended the show to in the past.
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510333/throughline
Edit:
BtB is my favorite, but that’s already been mentioned. Our Fake History is my second favorite and also very worth a listen!
Their angle on things is addressing points in history that, for one reason or another, have been misrepresented or misremembered, but they get into all sorts of topics, so that’s not always their explicit goal.
There is also This Podcast Will Kill You, which is more a science show than history, but they always have a history segment on whatever their subject is (mostly viruses, infections, diseases, and occasionally poisons and disorders). The hosts are both named Erin. That’s not relevant to the thread. I just think it’s funny.
BBC’s You’re Dead To Me is good if you want something a bit light. There’s a regular host who’s joined by a comedian and a historian. Covers a different topic each time.
Mike Duncan’s The History of Rome and Revolutions podcasts (particularly the French Revolution series).
Behind The Bastards isn’t a general history podcast, but what it covers is history.
Well There’s Your Problem has a lot of personality while discussing historic disasters.
