The Stuff You Missed in History Class FAQ

My podcast is broken! Help!

Our troubleshooting tips are posted at this link. If they don't work, drop us an email. Top

Where's your RSS feed?

It's here. (If the browser you're in can't read RSS, you might want to right-click/ctrl-click on Mac to copy it instead.) Top

Where's the RSS feed for This Day in History Class?

It's here. (If the browser you're in can't read RSS, you might want to right-click/ctrl-click on Mac to copy it instead.) Top

What's your email address?

Historypodcast at howstuffworks dot com. (If you're about to ask, "Why isn't that a clickable link?" the answer is "To cut the level of spam in our inbox.") Top

What's your mailing address?

675 Ponce De Leon Ave. Suite 4500, Atlanta, GA 30308. Top

How else can I contact you?

Our contact page is here. Top

Have you done a podcast on [topic]?

The fastest, easiest and most reliable way to get an answer to this question is to Google "missed in history" and the subject you're asking about. If we've covered it, the episode will probably be the first result (sometimes, the show notes are first). We have other tips for searching the archive here, but you'll definitely get a faster response from Google than from us, unfortunately. Our website and the HowStuffWorks app for iOS and Android also include all our episodes and are searchable. Top

Why haven't you done a podcast on [topic]? Seems like a huge oversight.

It mostly boils down to having about 5,000 years of recorded history to draw from (plus the prehistory we get into from time to time) but our show only comes out twice a week.

Of course, not everyone follows the question of "Why haven't you covered this?" with something that implies that we've made a major oversight or omission in not having done so. But of the folks who do, nearly all are asking about an event or figure who is already incredibly well-known ... say, Marie Curie. We've certainly done shows that have looked into lesser-known aspects of an incredibly well-known person's life, like Rosa Parks or Isaac Newton. We've done the same for events that played out much differently than how people "remember" them, like the Boston Massacre. But in general, we'd rather spend more time talking about people and events that aren't already at the top of folks' memories than rehashing people and events that have already had a ton of time in the spotlight. Top

If I send you a book, will you do a podcast on it?

We absolutely appreciate your generosity, but we already get more books directly from publishers and publicists than we can read and do podcasts on. (Publishers and publicists, we're sorry for not answering your email about the book.) Also, unless something is extremely rare or obscure, we can usually get what we need from the library, thanks to library networks and interlibrary loan. So, unless you're working directly for a publisher or publicist (sorry sorry sorry for not always responding to those releases, publishers and publicists), we ask that you please not send us unsolicited books. The same goes for copies of papers, theses, family documents, and the like. Top

So what does it take to get my suggestion picked for an episode?

There really isn't a formula. When we decide on topics, we're balancing a lot of factors, like what we think will interest people, how much time we have to devote to that particular episode's research, how many requests we've gotten on the subject, how much scholarship already exists on it, and whether that scholarship is high-quality. Particularly when it comes to indigenous peoples whose territory has been colonized by other powers, it's often difficult to find research material that isn't implicitly or explicitly skewed in favor of the colonizers' influence, which is something we want to avoid on our show. We're also trying to juggle when and where events happened, as well as who was involved, so we can present as much diversity in the show as possible.

Basically, we're juggling so many factors when planning our calendar that it always feels like we're letting some things slide in favor of others. For us to do an episode on a listener suggestion, it has to fit within that juggle, which is constantly shifting and changing. We're also creeping toward 1,000 listener suggestions, so ... that's a lot. Top

Why have you never done an episode on [state/nation]?

The biggest reason is just that the world is very large, and there are lots of places that have never made an appearance. But in addition to that, the vast majority of topic requests we get from listeners are from the United States and Europe. The overwhelming number of our listeners are from the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, which means our queue of listener requests is overwhelmingly from those nations as well. We do intentionally choose subjects from the rest of the world, too, but it's safe to say that the U.S. and Europe will always be a big part of what we talk about, and there will always be some nations (and individual U.S. states) that haven't gotten as much air time as others. Top

Why don't you do a series where you do one episode from each state?

A surprising number of folks have requested a one-state-per-episode series. However, since we only do two episodes a week, this would either dominate our calendar with only United States history for months, or it would take us years to finish. Top

Have you considered an episode on [topic]?

After three years and more than 150 episodes, this question has become just about impossible to answer! The process of choosing a topic usually involves considering and discarding a whole pile of topics until we find the best one for that particular week. ("Discarded" topics aren't often discarded completely ... they're just put off for a later date, when they might fit into the schedule a little better.) Unless we've decided definitely to or not to cover something - which is only the case maybe 5 percent of the time we're asked this question - we don't usually have a better answer than, "Maybe? I'm not sure." Top

Will you do an episode on [topic]?

About 80 percent of the time, the answer is, "Maybe! One never knows." Another 18 percent of the time, it's, "We have already." The remaining 2 percent is either a solid yes or no. (In other words, as with "Have you considered an episode on [topic]," we can't often give this one a satisfying answer.) Top

What are you doing for Black History Month/Women's History Month/LGBT History Month/Other History Month?

We can usually answer this question with the name of an upcoming episode, but we don't really approach our podcast calendar in terms of thematic history months, for a couple of reasons:

1. A lot of our listeners live outside the U.S., and history and heritage months fall at different times of the year in different places. For example, Women's History Month is in March in the United States, but in Canada, it's in October. October is LGBT History Month in the United States ... but in the U.K., LGBT History Month is in February. (Meanwhile, the U.S. also has Pride month, celebrated in June, which isn't exactly a history month, but which a lot of people observe by talking about LGBTQ history.)
2. One of our major priorities on the show is to cover underrepresented history all year long, not just during a particular history or heritage month. We're not usually planning things "for" Black History Month, Women's History Month, Pride Month, et cetera, because that's history we're trying to tell all year. (We do, from time to time, realize it's a particular history or heritage month and we haven't covered that part of history in a while, at which point we often take the opportunity to remedy that.)

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Can you come to [my city/my local convention]?

We started getting this question a lot after our first live show in New York. While we'd love to go everywhere, a lot of factors influence where we do a show. We've done a lot of appearances at conventions, museums and historical sites, always at the invitation of the event or venue. If you'd like us to do a show in your area, talk to the organizers at conventions that might have overlap with our podcast, or with the programming staff at libraries, museums and the like near you, and suggest our show as a guest.

We also started our first stand-alone tours in 2018, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast. Several factors went into which cities we included on each tour:

• Cities where we knew we had a lot of listeners
• Within those cities, which ones had venues that were appropriate for a live podcast recording, and also the right size for the audience we expected we could draw
• Then within those cities, which ones we could reasonably get to from one day to the next

We'll almost certainly do more tours like this in the future. We'll still be taking into account the size of our audience in each city, the venues that are available, and travel times from one place to the next, but we'll also be focusing on different regions of the U.S. (Yes, we'd love to tour internationally, but we're not quite there yet.)

Regardless of when or if that happens, one of our requirements for all our live appearances is that we be able to record live podcasts and include them as episodes of our show. There are typically parts of the show that are not published (so part of the show is for just the folks who came out to watch it), but the body of the live episode itself, barring unforeseen difficulties, will be an episode of the podcast, too. Top

How do you research the show?

Holly and I record two episodes of the show per week (more if one of us is planning to take time off that will interrupt our normal recording schedule ... leading up to the winter 2016 holidays we recorded 12 shows in three weeks). Each of us researches one of those two episodes, writes a draft that's somewhere between a script and an outline, and shares that draft with the other. We each spend between eight and 20 hours researching each episode, depending on the scope of the story and the information available about it.

Our individual research processes are pretty similar. For my part, I start with a quick Google search to get a sense of whether I'm likely to find enough information on a subject to do it justice, followed by a search at the local library for relevant books, preferably from university presses. Then, I search a number of databases for scholarly articles on the subject. If I have what I need at that point, great! If not, I try to fill in the details through non-academic, but still reputable sources. Sometimes, when we're talking about a historical figure's life, we'll use their memoirs or biographies as a source, being careful to note any points that might be embellished or inaccurate. We review all that information, confirm our facts, and distill it all down into a story in our own words. Since so many people listen to podcasts while doing other things, we try to strike a balance between the level of detail and the fact that at least some of the audience is distracted. Our final step is trying to work out correct pronunciations for all those words and names from places we've never lived and languages we don't speak - though in spite of all that, most of the corrections we get on the show boil down to not saying things the way locals do.

We've also discussed our process on the show in Listener Mail: FAQ Edition and Six More Impossible Episodes. Top

Do you have a reading list/recommended book list/Goodreads account?

No, but we list all the books we've used in our research in the show notes in our blog. (As handy as a Goodreads account sounds, we're barely keeping up with the social media accounts we already maintain, so Goodreads would most likely become a sad, neglected graveyard with only a couple of books in it.) Top

What was that sponsor you had on the show?

Here's a complete list of our sponsors. Top

Will you hire me to do research/write for you?

We appreciate your interest, but we aren't hiring researchers or writers. Also, we don't accept guest posts or unsolicited articles or podcast outlines. Top