Hey everyone. Before we get started this week, just a bit of a fun announcement.

For the very first time, I'll be doing an AMA or Ask Me Anything, hosted by the fine folks over at What Pods,

a podcasting service that helps listeners find other podcasts to listen to.

I've never done anything quite like this before, so I'm interested to see how it

goes. And if you'd like, you can submit questions in advance. I'll put the link in the show

notes and on the web page and on Facebook. The actual AMA will last for 90 minutes, and it will be on

March 27th, starting at 9.30 in the morning, U.S. Eastern Time.

Again, you can submit questions in advance. I think it'll be interesting, new thing to try,

and I hope to hear from me all there episode 232, A Thief in the Night.

When I teach in a classroom, one of my favorite ideas to try and convey to students has to do with the idea of a good story.

Many of them, used to traditional history classes where there's tests with defined right answers, you have to memorize,

where there's a series of factors leading to event X and onto event Y that you can bundle up neatly for an essay,

tend to view history is cut and dried.

And I try to tell them that history, in fact, is less about facts and more about the stories we build from those facts,

and that sometimes a particularly powerful story can develop a life all its own in history,

regardless of how close it is to the actual facts.

History really is a narrative art.

It's an elaborate construction game where we have the pieces

and have to assemble them in an order that makes sense to us, and then defend that order as the

most sensible possible interpretation. But here's the thing. Humans love a good story with clear,

powerful themes, and they love that story, even if it's not

grounded in facts. I'm sure we've all seen some kind of discussion like this, because

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