So there's this question that at first seems
really easy to answer, but then when you start
thinking about it, you soon discover it's not
easy at all. It's really difficult. Surreal,
even. The question is this. What is history?
My name is Jonathan Seyfried, and this is The
Historian's Notebook, a podcast about how history
gets made. So let's talk about that question
again. What is history? And why is this podcast
going to be doing something different? with the
subject of history. All right. Well, if you look
at a lot of historical content out there, whether
it's a podcast or a movie or a book written by
a scholar who is credentialed at some university
or a historical fiction novel or a Netflix series,
there's all kinds of history out there. So we
can talk about what is history in terms of all
the different formats that it could be. But where
does it come from? Like, how is it that we get
these varieties of products that all take us
to some place in the past, using our imagination,
really, as viewers, listeners, or readers? History
is stuff that happened, right? And in some ways,
it seems like it should be a pretty simple thing,
because it's in the past, so it can't be changed.
And therefore, it's gotta just be all about recovery,
right? Let's just go find it. But when you really
start getting into the question of what happened
in the past? What you really start to confront
is that we have, in some situations, a lot of
information, and in other situations, hardly
any information. And so, how is it that we can
construct what happened in the past in some kind
of narrative format, in some kind of story? How
does that happen? How do people, whether they're
a novelist writing historical fiction or a scholar
going into the archives and looking at hundreds
of documents from the past, how do they decide
what story they're going to tell? This is a really
difficult set of choices that everybody who works
with history has to make because you can't just
record every single thing that would be impossible
and on the other hand you can't just stick to
only the facts because what's in between the
facts can really be super important and the heart
of the human experience for example If you come
across some document that says, in such and such
year and in such and such land, a great pestilence
took hold. Well, you've got the information that
there was some kind of disease that happened
at that time and place. But that's not really
what we're looking for when we're trying to get
into history. What we're looking for is some
kind of understanding of what it meant. What
did it mean to be in that land at that time,
dealing with whatever disease that was? That's
what we're really looking for. Not just the fact
that a disease outbreak happened. We're looking
for the experience. And in order to get at that,
it requires some imagination, for sure. but it
also requires some judgment calls, at times really
tough judgment calls. And that's where the heart
of this podcast is really going to be. The Historian's
Notebook will give you an in -depth look at how
professional historians, those whose job it is
to present with their training and expertise,
a narrative of something that happened in the
past, how they go about making those judgment
calls. So we're going to, in the course of this
podcast series, explore all kinds of different
times and places. And we're going to see not
just how historians have come up with these conclusions
that at times can be extremely surprising. But
we're also going to see how, in many ways, the
work of a historian with all their expertise
will inevitably involve mistakes and errors and
guesses that turn out to be wrong, but those
never really make it into the final product.
Of course, there'd not really be a whole lot
of reason to include that in the final product.
Because the whole job of an expert is to say
look I have used my expertise in order to arrive
at Some kind of conclusion that can be trusted.
That's the result of my expertise So you don't
want to go through a whole litany of things that
you got wrong if you're having that goal So a
lot of the errors the guesses all of that where
actually a lot of the real interaction with history
takes place, it gets hidden. And this podcast
has a different approach. The goal, strangely,
is to expose the errors and the mistakes at the
same time as you get to watch somebody, me, try
to develop a level of understanding and expertise
regarding something that had happened in the
past. And sometimes, with some subjects, it feels
a little bit easier or a little bit more difficult.
But the reasons for that can be pretty surprising.
The podcast is going to run for a few seasons
and On the first season, we're going to journey
to the 14th century in the Crown of Aragon, what
is today a part of Spain. And we're going to
look at gender dynamics on the part of a particular
king and queen. Later seasons will feature places
as far away as India and as close, to me at least,
as Roswell. So stick around and keep coming back
to check to see what new seasons have to offer.
But the first one is going to be something. And
so look out for the season trailer for the first
season of the Historian's Notebook. The title
of that season is Molt Cara Companyona.