WEBVTT 00:00:05.030 --> 00:00:09.310 So there's this question that at first seems 00:00:09.310 --> 00:00:13.289 really easy to answer, but then when you start 00:00:13.289 --> 00:00:17.230 thinking about it, you soon discover it's not 00:00:17.230 --> 00:00:21.789 easy at all. It's really difficult. Surreal, 00:00:21.829 --> 00:00:27.750 even. The question is this. What is history? 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:48.380 My name is Jonathan Seyfried, and this is The 00:00:48.380 --> 00:00:54.299 Historian's Notebook, a podcast about how history 00:00:54.299 --> 00:01:02.539 gets made. So let's talk about that question 00:01:02.539 --> 00:01:09.560 again. What is history? And why is this podcast 00:01:09.560 --> 00:01:13.319 going to be doing something different? with the 00:01:13.319 --> 00:01:18.219 subject of history. All right. Well, if you look 00:01:18.219 --> 00:01:22.060 at a lot of historical content out there, whether 00:01:22.060 --> 00:01:28.099 it's a podcast or a movie or a book written by 00:01:28.099 --> 00:01:33.200 a scholar who is credentialed at some university 00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:38.599 or a historical fiction novel or a Netflix series, 00:01:38.959 --> 00:01:44.400 there's all kinds of history out there. So we 00:01:44.400 --> 00:01:47.920 can talk about what is history in terms of all 00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:51.340 the different formats that it could be. But where 00:01:51.340 --> 00:01:55.599 does it come from? Like, how is it that we get 00:01:55.599 --> 00:02:00.159 these varieties of products that all take us 00:02:00.159 --> 00:02:04.540 to some place in the past, using our imagination, 00:02:04.739 --> 00:02:15.639 really, as viewers, listeners, or readers? History 00:02:15.639 --> 00:02:20.319 is stuff that happened, right? And in some ways, 00:02:20.879 --> 00:02:23.379 it seems like it should be a pretty simple thing, 00:02:23.639 --> 00:02:27.520 because it's in the past, so it can't be changed. 00:02:28.099 --> 00:02:32.280 And therefore, it's gotta just be all about recovery, 00:02:32.780 --> 00:02:39.039 right? Let's just go find it. But when you really 00:02:39.039 --> 00:02:43.039 start getting into the question of what happened 00:02:43.039 --> 00:02:47.199 in the past? What you really start to confront 00:02:47.199 --> 00:02:52.580 is that we have, in some situations, a lot of 00:02:52.580 --> 00:02:56.979 information, and in other situations, hardly 00:02:56.979 --> 00:03:03.300 any information. And so, how is it that we can 00:03:03.300 --> 00:03:07.699 construct what happened in the past in some kind 00:03:07.699 --> 00:03:11.639 of narrative format, in some kind of story? How 00:03:11.639 --> 00:03:16.259 does that happen? How do people, whether they're 00:03:16.259 --> 00:03:19.860 a novelist writing historical fiction or a scholar 00:03:19.860 --> 00:03:22.740 going into the archives and looking at hundreds 00:03:22.740 --> 00:03:26.180 of documents from the past, how do they decide 00:03:26.180 --> 00:03:30.319 what story they're going to tell? This is a really 00:03:30.319 --> 00:03:34.340 difficult set of choices that everybody who works 00:03:34.340 --> 00:03:38.860 with history has to make because you can't just 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:44.500 record every single thing that would be impossible 00:03:44.500 --> 00:03:50.000 and on the other hand you can't just stick to 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:54.139 only the facts because what's in between the 00:03:54.139 --> 00:03:59.280 facts can really be super important and the heart 00:03:59.280 --> 00:04:04.460 of the human experience for example If you come 00:04:04.460 --> 00:04:08.020 across some document that says, in such and such 00:04:08.020 --> 00:04:12.199 year and in such and such land, a great pestilence 00:04:12.199 --> 00:04:15.979 took hold. Well, you've got the information that 00:04:15.979 --> 00:04:18.459 there was some kind of disease that happened 00:04:18.459 --> 00:04:22.459 at that time and place. But that's not really 00:04:22.459 --> 00:04:26.180 what we're looking for when we're trying to get 00:04:26.180 --> 00:04:30.250 into history. What we're looking for is some 00:04:30.250 --> 00:04:32.689 kind of understanding of what it meant. What 00:04:32.689 --> 00:04:37.410 did it mean to be in that land at that time, 00:04:37.689 --> 00:04:41.410 dealing with whatever disease that was? That's 00:04:41.410 --> 00:04:44.449 what we're really looking for. Not just the fact 00:04:44.449 --> 00:04:48.889 that a disease outbreak happened. We're looking 00:04:48.889 --> 00:04:53.750 for the experience. And in order to get at that, 00:04:54.189 --> 00:04:58.300 it requires some imagination, for sure. but it 00:04:58.300 --> 00:05:03.560 also requires some judgment calls, at times really 00:05:03.560 --> 00:05:07.459 tough judgment calls. And that's where the heart 00:05:07.459 --> 00:05:15.120 of this podcast is really going to be. The Historian's 00:05:15.120 --> 00:05:19.259 Notebook will give you an in -depth look at how 00:05:19.259 --> 00:05:23.040 professional historians, those whose job it is 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:27.490 to present with their training and expertise, 00:05:28.329 --> 00:05:31.089 a narrative of something that happened in the 00:05:31.089 --> 00:05:34.870 past, how they go about making those judgment 00:05:34.870 --> 00:05:39.529 calls. So we're going to, in the course of this 00:05:39.529 --> 00:05:43.290 podcast series, explore all kinds of different 00:05:43.290 --> 00:05:46.889 times and places. And we're going to see not 00:05:46.889 --> 00:05:51.509 just how historians have come up with these conclusions 00:05:51.509 --> 00:05:55.680 that at times can be extremely surprising. But 00:05:55.680 --> 00:05:59.779 we're also going to see how, in many ways, the 00:05:59.779 --> 00:06:03.079 work of a historian with all their expertise 00:06:03.079 --> 00:06:09.920 will inevitably involve mistakes and errors and 00:06:09.920 --> 00:06:14.339 guesses that turn out to be wrong, but those 00:06:14.339 --> 00:06:16.899 never really make it into the final product. 00:06:17.879 --> 00:06:21.579 Of course, there'd not really be a whole lot 00:06:21.579 --> 00:06:23.980 of reason to include that in the final product. 00:06:24.360 --> 00:06:27.500 Because the whole job of an expert is to say 00:06:27.500 --> 00:06:31.879 look I have used my expertise in order to arrive 00:06:31.879 --> 00:06:35.899 at Some kind of conclusion that can be trusted. 00:06:36.019 --> 00:06:39.699 That's the result of my expertise So you don't 00:06:39.699 --> 00:06:42.360 want to go through a whole litany of things that 00:06:42.360 --> 00:06:47.759 you got wrong if you're having that goal So a 00:06:47.759 --> 00:06:52.300 lot of the errors the guesses all of that where 00:06:52.300 --> 00:06:56.220 actually a lot of the real interaction with history 00:06:56.220 --> 00:07:00.519 takes place, it gets hidden. And this podcast 00:07:00.519 --> 00:07:05.500 has a different approach. The goal, strangely, 00:07:06.620 --> 00:07:12.459 is to expose the errors and the mistakes at the 00:07:12.459 --> 00:07:16.860 same time as you get to watch somebody, me, try 00:07:16.860 --> 00:07:21.189 to develop a level of understanding and expertise 00:07:21.189 --> 00:07:24.209 regarding something that had happened in the 00:07:24.209 --> 00:07:28.610 past. And sometimes, with some subjects, it feels 00:07:28.610 --> 00:07:31.470 a little bit easier or a little bit more difficult. 00:07:31.930 --> 00:07:35.769 But the reasons for that can be pretty surprising. 00:07:41.430 --> 00:07:45.189 The podcast is going to run for a few seasons 00:07:45.189 --> 00:07:49.079 and On the first season, we're going to journey 00:07:49.079 --> 00:07:53.860 to the 14th century in the Crown of Aragon, what 00:07:53.860 --> 00:07:57.660 is today a part of Spain. And we're going to 00:07:57.660 --> 00:08:01.480 look at gender dynamics on the part of a particular 00:08:01.480 --> 00:08:08.060 king and queen. Later seasons will feature places 00:08:08.060 --> 00:08:13.980 as far away as India and as close, to me at least, 00:08:14.420 --> 00:08:19.699 as Roswell. So stick around and keep coming back 00:08:19.699 --> 00:08:22.959 to check to see what new seasons have to offer. 00:08:23.420 --> 00:08:27.800 But the first one is going to be something. And 00:08:27.800 --> 00:08:33.720 so look out for the season trailer for the first 00:08:33.720 --> 00:08:36.600 season of the Historian's Notebook. The title 00:08:36.600 --> 00:08:40.759 of that season is Molt Cara Companyona.