Welcome to the history of the Americans podcast, episode 16.

This episode is called Sidebar, Bringing It All Together.

Because all my listeners are extremely smart, you know the word sidebar has multiple meanings. And law, it is a

conference between a judge and lawyers out of the earshot of the jury. In journalism, it's that

box or separate explanatory piece outside the main article. In the history of the Americans

podcast, a sidebar is an episode outside of the timeline, which at this writing has reached roughly 1536.

The purpose of this sidebar is to talk a bit about the show to date and put the first 30 years of European exploration and conquest in some context.

In other words, bringing it all together.

I may in the future do other sidebars on historical topics that I've stumbled across or on my mind,

but wouldn't get into the timeline for months or years or that have already passed in the timeline.

We shall see. I am approaching this with more spontaneity than, well, most things.

Regardless, we are recording this episode on April 7, 2021 in Austin, Texas.

The music credit during the writing part goes to station WWOZ in New Orleans for my money the best radio station in America.

First off, I suspect it is obvious that the history of the Americans podcast is a labor of love.

I want to thank all of you, including especially those who have listened all the way through from the beginning. It has been great so far. Thanks to some recent

social media love from Twitter phenom Dave Burge, there have been more than 5,000 downloads and plays of this podcast, which is very

energizing so early on.

I hope it is kindling a new or renewed interest in history in some of you.

If you think of it, please tell one person, or even better, a teenager, because they need to know some history

too. Or, you might go to the History of the American's podcast page on Facebook and share it with your

friends. Second, as I said in the introductory episode, my goal is to do three episodes on the timeline per month.

We have been doing one a week since we started, but part of that was working through a backlog of episodes I had written before I figured out all the technical stuff.

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