Histories of the Unexpected: How to Be A Historian (Podcast)!

This has been a good week for me and how-to-do-history podcasts! Not only did I start listening to the Doing History: On Biography series on Ben Franklin's World, but I also found a new podcast all together, Histories of the Unexpected, with BBC History Presenter Dr. Sam Willis & Professor James Daybell. 

The podcast itself is an ADHD History Nerd's absolute dream, with episodes having the sense of a very well-informed free-association chat on themes such as "The Lean" or "Dust." And last year, they did a mini-series on How to Be a Historian, which is, obviously, exactly the kind of podcasts/resources I love coming across! 

EPISODE 41: HOW TO BE A HISTORIAN – EPISODE 1 (This episode goes into what each of the hosts do as historians)

EPISIDE 49: HOW TO BE A HISTORIAN – EPISODE 2  (How they became historians)

EPISODE 50: HOW TO BE A HISTORIAN – EPISODE 3 (How to get your kids into history)

EPISODE 54: HOW TO BE A HISTORIAN – EPISODE 4 (History for Children)

EPISODE 56: HOW TO BE A HISTORIAN – EPISODE 5 (How to choose a subject and start on research)

Episodes 1, 2, & 5 are great insight to the backgrounds, professional lives, and methods of working of two very different types of historians, and I found it to be an excellent listen!

Ben Franklin's World: Doing History: On Biography! (Podcast Series!)

It looks like it's been a few years since I've mentioned the excellent Doing History series on the Ben Franklin's World history podcast, but the host Liz Covart is currently doing season 3: On  Biography, and I am super excited!

It's exciting for me because what little information I can find online that is helpful to me as a self-trained historian is pretty much never about biography, which is probably what most of my work will be (biographies of people and also of communities). I have searched quite a bit online for specific How-To-Do-Biography information, advice, resources, etc, but have always come up empty handed. So I admit to doing so happy flailing when I looked at my History "channel" on my Stitcher (podcast) app and saw see that there was not only more Doing History episodes, but it was exactly what I most wanted to see! So, thank you Liz & the Omohundro Institute! 

Oh, oh, oh. And! Not only does this series exist, which is great, but also the first episode (Episode 209: Considering Biography) even features one of my all-time favorite biographers, the amazing Professor of History & Law at Harvard, Annette Gordon-Reed. She wrote The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family which I listened to while driving across country last year and it just blew me away. The depth of the research, and the way she was able to return to Sally Hemmings the personhood and agency that  has been denied to her in every other work I've read, and while still portraying Jefferson as a real human, without making excuses for him but also without turning him into a caricature villain (I certainly do consider all slave owners villains, but I find it very useful to learn about him in all his complexities and contradictions.)

The series isn't completed yet, but I'll come back and edit in the 4th episode next week. As of now the episodes are:

Episode 209: Considering Biography
Episode 210: Considering John Marshall, Part 1
Episode 211: Considering John Marshall, Part 2


I highly recommend checking them out! :)

History (and related) Podcasts!

• BackStory with the American History Guys
• Ben Franklin's World
• History of English Podcast
• History Extra
• Myths and Legends
• New Books in American Studies
• New Books in Anthropology
• New Books in Biography
• New Books in Critical Theory
• New Books in Gender Studies
• New Books in History
• New Books in Intellectual History
• New Books in Native American Studies
• Office Hours
• Philosophize This!
• Stuff You Missed in History Class
• The Bowery Boys: NYC History
• The History Chicks
• The Pamphlet
• The Way of Improvement Leads Home
• Who Makes Cents | A History of Capitalism Podcast

Election Day Podcasts!

I'm a New Books Network podcast junkie, and I was attempting to link to some relevant-to-election-day author interviews over on FB, but there were just far too many.! So, movin' it over to blog format. This is just a quick list I have made on my lunch break, looking through the first 20 pages of the New Books in Political Science page, so this is certainly not any sort of comprehensive list!

Hillary & Drumpf

• The Rise of Trump: America's Authoritarian Spring
• Hillary Rising: The Politics, Persona, and Policies of a New American Dynasty
• Bill and Hillary: The Politics of the Personal
• Hillary Rodham Clinton: Some Girls are Born to Lead

Gender & Race

• The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women's Quest for the American Presidency
• Counting Women's Ballots: Female Voters from Suffrage through the New Deal
• Masculinity, Femininity, and American Political Behavior
• Masculinity, Media, and the American Presidency
• Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932-1965
• Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority
• From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation

Parties & the Party System

• Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America
• Right Moves: The Conservative American Think Tank in Political Culture since 1945
• The Inevitable Party: Why Attempts to Kill the Party System Fail and How they Weaken Democracy
• Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign
• Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction
• Too Dumb Too Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections
• Why Washington Won't Work: Polarization, Political Trust, and the Governing Crisis

Money & Politics

• Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy
• Fed Power: How Finance Wins
• Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections
• Building a Business of Politics: The Rise of Political Consulting and the Transformation of American Democracy
• Welfare for the Wealthy: Parties, Social Spending, and Inequality in the United States
• Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail

More:

• Deciding What's True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism
• The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy
• The Deregulatory Moment?: A Comparative Perspective on Changing Campaign Finance Laws
• 150 Years of ObamaCare
• Rethinking the Administrative Presidency: Trust, Intellectual Capital, and Appointee-Careerist Relations in the George W. Bush Administration
• The Democracy Promotion Paradox
• Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became the Most Punitive Democracy in the World
• Political Advertising in the United States
• American Insecurity: Why Our Economic Fears Lead to Political Inaction
• Anxious Politics: Democratic Citizenship in a Threatening World
• Secular Faith: How Culture Has Trumped Religion in American Politics

Learning to Do History outside of Academia

Since I'm currently on my own with my studies, I haven't had any senior historians taking me under their wings and teaching me how to actually.. you know... do history. I feel that lack of guidance acutely at times.

 I've been at all this for some months, though, and I've managed to find a few resources that have been a significant help in how to conceptualize the work of a historian, as well as learning how actual research and actual writing is done. These aren't the only History podcasts I listen to, but they are the ones that either explicitly talk about how Historians do/should think & how actual research and writing is done (like the first few), or ones that talk to authors of historical books and are particularly helpful to hear how other researchers actually work.

Podcasts:
The Way of Improvement Leads Home
Doing History Series on Ben Franklin's World
Practicing History
The Art of the Review
Ben Franklin's World
New Books in Biography
New Books in History

  Academia-oriented blogs:
(Not history-specific, but have also been quite helpful)
Thesis Whisperer
The Research Whisperer
PhD Talk
Get A Life, PhD
ProfHacker
Tenure, She Wrote
The Professor Is In
Inside Higher Ed

I've also been finding other historians to add on Twitter and Academia.edu on the social media side of things. It's hard to bee too active on Twitter currently, as I spend all day at my day job (no twittering there!) and then at home I rarely get on a computer. I need to figure out a good plan for that. And of course, Academia.edu is a bit sad when you don't actually have any papers of your own to list! But, hopefully I will someday!

Podcast: Philosophize This! - How to Win an Argument Pt. 2 (Logical Fallacies)

Second part! I liked compiling the last list. I'm a very visual person, so the comics and memes help reinforce these ideas for me.

• Red Herring (Wiki, Fallacy Files)

• Argument from Authority // Appeal to Authority (Wiki, Fallacy Files)

• Begging the Question // Circular Reasoning (Wiki, Fallacy Files)

• Black and/or White Fallacy // Either/or Fallacy // False Dilemma  (Wiki, Fallacy Files)

Hasty Generalization // Fallacy of Insufficient Sample (Wiki, Fallacy Files)

Podcast: Philosophize This! - How to Win an Argument Pt. 1 (Logical Fallacies)

Listened to this on the drive to work this morning.

I've been fascinated by the still rather-new-to-me concept of Logical Fallacies (6 years of college and I never ran into them before?!?! Ugh.) and with things like this, sometimes it takes me a bunch of exposure before it really starts to stick. Philosophize This! is actually the first podcast I ever downloaded, but then I got distracted by some other great 'casts, and went without listening to any at all for a month or so-- but I've started listening once more, and I must say it's one of my favorite podcasts out there. Stephen West does a great job of making things simple and easy to absorb.

In this episode he talks about the importance of learning to craft and refute arguments well, and thus the necessity of understanding logical fallacies. He goes on to discuss several, which I will list here, with illustrations (first two pictures from An Illustrated Guide to Logical Fallacies, which has been sitting in my Amazon Wishlist for ages!)

• Argument from Consequences / Appeal to Consequences (Wiki, Fallacy Files)

• Affirming the Consequent (Wiki, Fallacy Files)

• Argument from Ignorance // Appeal to Ignorance (Wiki, Fallacy Files)


• Argument from Incredulity // Lack of Imagination (Wiki)
  
   

• Slippery Slope (Wiki, Fallacy Files)

• Straw Man (Wiki, Fallacy Files)

• Ad Hominem (Wiki, Fallacy Files)

• Appeal to the Bandwagon // Appeal to Popularity \\ Argument by Consensus (Wiki, Fallacy Files)