#304 National History Day w/ Cathy Gorn & Don Wildman
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 22 April 2024
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Can learning the skills required to do good history serve as an antidote to conspiracy theory? Cathy Gorn & Don Wildman think so, and in this episode they join us to discuss their work to teach those skills in the 6th-12th grade classroom through National History Day, a program that reaches more than half a million students and tens of thousands of teachers each year. We agree with them and think National History Day is an American treasure, so we hope you enjoy this conversation about what goes into creating good history, how we can better teach that to the public, and how your kids can get involved in National History Day.
Click here to learn more about National History Day programs for students & teachers.
Dr. Cathy Gorn has spent more than four decades working with National History Day and currently serves as NHD's Executive Director.
Don Wildman is a podcast & documentary host whose projects include Mysteries at the Museum (Travel Channel) & the podcast American History Hit. He currently serves as Co-Chair of National History Day's Development Committee.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Bob Crawford and I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now how did we get to now Ben |
| 0:12.3 | no it's a long story there's 300 plus episodes telling that story and we're about 1% of the way |
| 0:17.9 | there today's episode is very close to our hearts because it's, it is our mission. |
| 0:23.9 | You know, the road to now, we want to, you know, look at these various aspects of history, |
| 0:29.0 | be it, uh, cultural history, social history, political history, sports history, |
| 0:33.1 | whatever it is. |
| 0:34.3 | And we want to figure out how did we get here today? |
| 0:37.6 | And you know, there's an organization out there that is promoting that idea, the idea |
| 0:45.2 | that to know history is to have a better sense of yourself and the world around you. |
| 0:51.4 | And they are working hard for the past 40 years, 50 years, |
| 0:57.7 | 50 years to make sure our kids, Ben, have a chance to participate in the gathering and |
| 1:06.3 | collection and study of history. Of course, I'm talking about National History Day, which is coming up soon, |
| 1:13.7 | and we have as our guest, the executive director, for 40 years of that history, Kathy Gorn, |
| 1:22.7 | and a board member of National History Day, and also a history enthusiast, a historian in his own |
| 1:32.0 | right. He's worked on the history channel, the travel channel. He's got his own podcast, Don Wildman. |
| 1:38.5 | Host of Mysteries of the Museum and current host of American History hit. So we are right now, if you were listening and |
| 1:46.0 | you like this podcast, we are now spinning into like a proton accelerator, if that's a real |
| 1:51.2 | thing, of everything that we care about with these two guests. So welcome to the show. |
| 1:55.5 | Thank you. Happy to be here. Thank you so much. I just wanted to get started with this. |
| 2:00.8 | And National History Day, |
| 2:02.0 | I think a lot of people here who are listening know about it because it's done such an |
| 2:06.6 | incredible job. But if you haven't, I just want to start off by just getting it out there. My |
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