#100 Sidebar Conversation: Eric Yanis of the Other States of America History Podcast
The History of the Americans
Jack Henneman
4.9 • 632 Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2022
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is our one hundredth episode, at least by some counts, and also our first interview. Eric Yanis, the creator and host of The Other States of America History Podcast, agreed to be our first interviewee. We chatted about a wide range of subjects, including:
- How the pandemic motivated both of us to start our podcasts;
- Eric on teaching middle schoolers in New York during the pandmic;
- The different ways in which we put together our episodes;
- The rapidly declining interest in history among college undergraduates and some of its causes, including the de-emphasis of history in primary and middle schools;
- Middle schoolers today have almost no exposure to history before the sixth grade — “kids today” have not even heard of “teepees”;
- How interest in history rises as we age – “People become more interested in history the more history they have”;
- Should history podcasters be intimated by academic historians, and should academics be more supportive of popular history, even if it offends their professional sensibilities?
- “The zone where lives can live”;
- A digression on the historiography of the Popham/Sagadahoc Colony and the reasons for its failure;
- Our fantasy pub crawl with figures from sixteenth and seventeenth century America, assuming a universal translator;
- Things we hear from listeners;
- The competing claims for the inspiration of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”;
- Eric discusses the legacy of New Netherland in our language, our celebration of Christmas, and in our national self-image as a “melting pot”;
- So maybe I should publish the podcast on YouTube.
This was fun, and I hope you all enjoyed it. For those of you listening along in real time, may the season be filled with happiness, and may you give and receive excellent history books!
Jack on Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2
Eric on Twitter: @OtherStatesPod
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 100. |
| 0:10.1 | I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and we're recording my end of this, our first interview episode in Austin, Texas. |
| 0:17.2 | Our guest today is Eric Janice, host of another solo History Pod, the Other States of America |
| 0:23.2 | History podcast, and we're recording his end from a secure undisclosed location in upstate |
| 0:30.3 | New York. |
| 0:31.7 | For those few of you who are new to this podcast, we're telling the history of the lands |
| 0:36.6 | now encompassed by the United |
| 0:37.9 | States from the beginning without presentism. I'll let Eric tell you about the other states |
| 0:43.5 | of America History podcast. Suffice it to say that the other states has also been working |
| 0:50.2 | its way through the pre-colonial and early colonial era in North America. |
| 0:55.2 | Eric focuses on specific historical lines such as New Netherlands or New France rather than staying |
| 1:02.3 | to sort of broad chronological order as I do. |
| 1:06.0 | His episodes are full of the sort of detail I love, so I'm super excited that Eric agreed to be my guinea pig, as it were, |
| 1:13.6 | in this first interview episode of the History of the Americans podcast. |
| 1:17.9 | So with that, as Sam Harris would say, I bring you, Eric Janus. |
| 1:25.4 | All right. |
| 1:26.0 | Thank you for having me on the shell. |
| 1:31.6 | Thank you so much for... Yeah yeah undisclosed location you could disclose how you want but that's when i well i think all of upstate new york is an |
| 1:36.7 | undisclosed location but i'm in a balsson spa thereabouts yep all right i know exactly where it is |
| 1:43.6 | i uh have i have a cousin who lives in Saratoga Springs and get there about once a summer. |
| 1:49.5 | We have a place in the Adirondacks, and some of our listeners have heard me record from a secure undisclosed location outside of Tupper Lake, which is even more obscure than Ballston Spa, I guess. |
| 2:05.4 | You make upstate New York sound like it's Baffin Island or like somewhere Barrow, Alaska, or something that's like so far away from humanity. |
... |
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