Show notes
Academic history and popular history are very different things, but what is their purpose? And how should we, as people who like and consume history, understand and use them? Patrick launched a brand-new history show! It’s called Past Lives, and every episode explores the life of a real person who lived in the past.
Highlighted moments
I was taught to distrust narrative. The act of putting events in some sort of order, of picking and choosing what to emphasize and what not to, in service of a broader story, was anathema.
“Something my dad said early in that process was that he read popular history for the story. That was totally foreign to me at the time.”
“It's not an image of trenches, a massed infantry attack being scythed down by machine gun fire, or Gavrilo Princip's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It's the funeral, the cavalcade of gold braid and plumed helmets four years before a single shot was fired.”
“I have a distinct memory of my dissertation advisor telling me not to write something like this too well, lest readers think I'm trying to cover up substandard argumentation.”
Transcript
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