October 5-6, 2024: My New Podcast!

[200 yearsago this week, “Father ofBaseball” Henry Chadwick was born. So this week I’ve AmericanStudiedChadwick and other 19th century baseball histories, leading up tothis special weekend post on my new podcast on 19th century baseballand much more!]

This SundayI’ll drop the sixth Inning (episode, but y’know) of my weekly narrative historypodcast, The Celestials’ LastGame: Baseball, Bigotry, and the Battle for America. If you haven’t hada chance to listen yet, you can catch up on all the prior Innings at thathyperlink! Here I wanted to reflect on a few quick takeaways from my firstexperience with podcasting:

1)     Brevity: When I was initially planning thepodcast, I anticipated something like 45 minutes for each Inning, and honestlywas expecting that they might end up more like an hour long (as y’all know I’vegot a lot to say, and this is a story I really want to tell in full). But inwriting and especially in recording them, I found that about 25 minutes wasmuch more of a sweet spot, not only for me but also for my ideal audienceexperience. There’s always more to say, and I very much hope listeners willcontinue to research and read and learn about all the histories and issues thatI’m highlighting. But I also believe it’s far better to leave them wanting abit more than to overstay my welcome, and I hope I can keep applying thatlesson to all my public scholarly work, where I’d say it’s a universally goodgoal. Soul of wit and all!

2)     Honesty: There are various reasons why thebook project that was my longstanding expectation of how I’d tell this story neverquite came together, some of them entirely outside of my own control. But onesignificant factor is that there’s a dearth of information on some of its corehistories, including the details of the Celestials themselves (both in theirNew England semi-pro league and in their 1881 final game in San Francisco). Icouldn’t quite figure out how to frame that in a book manuscript, at least notwithout creating overtly fictionalized sections which just wasn’t how I wantedto approach it. But in a podcast, I could simply talk about those limitations,share how I was hoping to fill in some gaps with educated speculation, and hopethat listeners would appreciate my honesty and be willing to go on this journeywith me.

3)     Storytelling: That ability to share honestreflections was one nice effect of creating my first oral scholarly work, buteven more exciting was the way in which it felt like I could lean intostorytelling as a central goal. I’ve long argued that stories, narratives, offerus ways to learn about our histories, our communities, our identities that atthe very least complement, and in many ways transcend, more informational or pedanticmodes of communication. That’s why I wanted to create a narrative history projectfor my 7th book—and when that book transformed into a podcast, I wasable to lean into that emphasis on stories and storytelling even more fully andhappily. I hope the results speak to you as much as the process has to me!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Hopeyou’ll check out the podcast!