For­ward-think­ing his­to­ri­ans almost come close to for­ward-think­ing come­di­ans in terms of their enthu­si­asm for pod­cast­ing. Per­haps it stands to rea­son, since excel­lence at either pur­suit, dif­fer­ent as they may seem, demands no small degree of mem­o­ry and artic­u­late­ness. We’ve cov­ered sev­er­al ster­ling exam­ples of the his­tor­i­cal pod­cast right here on Open Cul­ture, includ­ing The His­to­ry of Rome, The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium, and The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps. My own his­tor­i­cal­ly-mind­ed pod­cast explo­rations have led me to every­thing from A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects to My His­to­ry Can Beat Up Your Pol­i­tics. If you pre­fer to take your his­to­ry lessons through a pair of ear­buds, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly savvy his­to­ry pro­fes­sion­als and pas­sion­ate­ly fas­ci­nat­ed ama­teurs alike have stepped up to fill the need. Rob Mona­co, one of the newest entrants into the game, has tak­en on per­haps the most ambi­tious his­to­ry pod­cast chal­lenge of them all: to tell the entire Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World.

“The gen­e­sis of the show hap­pened late one night after quite a few Dog­fish Head Midas Touch brews were con­sumed with this pod­cast­er’s long­time good bud­dy,” writes Mona­co on the pod­cast’s about page. “As I was a fresh­ly unem­ployed social stud­ies teacher with a mas­ters degree and noth­ing to do, my ami­go sug­gest­ed that I take up the micro­phone and start mak­ing my own show.” Begin­ning with an episode on the ear­li­est cre­ation myths, embed­ded above, he goes on to dis­cuss the dawn of man, the third dynasty of Ur, the ancient Hebrews, King Solomon, and so on, show­ing no signs of slow­ing in his mis­sion to, even­tu­al­ly, get up to the present day. No need to rush him, though, since, like any his­to­ri­an worth his salt, ama­teur or pro­fes­sion­al, he under­stands that telling his­to­ry well means telling a sto­ry well. “Pod­cast­ing is a beau­ti­ful medi­um that gives some­one like me a chance to reach out and share my love and knowl­edge of his­to­ry and cul­ture to a huge audi­ence,” he writes, “an audi­ence that even ten years ago, I would not have been able to reach with­out the back­ing of tra­di­tion­al media. And that’s incred­i­ble.” If he suc­cess­ful­ly pod­casts the whole his­to­ry of our world, well, that’s even more so.

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World is also avail­able on iTunes.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium Pod­cast Picks Up Where The His­to­ry of Rome Left Off

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Your pres­ence here indi­cates that you have an inter­est in cul­ture. But what, exact­ly is cul­ture? I’ve long addressed that per­haps too-broad ques­tion with a sim­ple work­ing def­i­n­i­tion: if Melvyn Bragg broad­casts about it, it’s prob­a­bly cul­ture. You may remem­ber the Eng­lish writer, pre­sen­ter, and House of Lords mem­ber from our posts on his doc­u­men­taries on Jack­son Pol­lock and Fran­cis Bacon, or from the men­tion of his long-run­ning BBC Radio 4 pro­gram In Our Time. But while that show cer­tain­ly has cov­ered sci­en­tif­ic top­ics — evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy, genet­ic muta­tion, the neu­tri­no — Bragg and his pan­els of experts spend even more air­time dis­cussing sub­jects claimed by the human­i­ties. Some of its most inter­est­ing moments hap­pen at the crossover, with sci­en­tif­ic angles on the human­is­tic and vice ver­sa; “Goethe and the Sci­ence of the Enlight­en­ment” comes to mind, to name but one exam­ple. Where con­ver­sa­tions like those can arise, I dare­say we have cul­ture at its most robust.

But I mere­ly cir­cle around the issue. Brag­g’s five-part Radio 4 series The Val­ue of the Cul­ture deals with the ques­tion of cul­ture’s nature head-on. Need we call cul­ture any­thing more spe­cif­ic than the body of things that mankind makes? Does cul­ture work as a force for good? What does cul­ture look like from an anthro­po­log­i­cal per­spec­tive? Must works reach a cer­tain stan­dard, or dis­play cer­tain qual­i­ties, to count as cul­ture? What does the gap between the sci­ences and the human­i­ties mean for cul­ture? How did “mass cul­ture” come about, as opposed to “high cul­ture”? And what does all this say about the cul­ture we have today? Assem­bling his typ­i­cal­ly impres­sive range of lumi­nar­ies from across the British intel­lec­tu­al land­scape, Bragg asks these ques­tions and many more besides, using as a point of depar­ture ninetheenth-cen­tu­ry poet, crit­ic, and school inspec­tor Matthew Arnold’s descrip­tion of cul­ture as “the best which has been thought and said” which pro­vides life its “sweet­ness and light.” But much has changed in how we regard cul­ture since the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, and here we have just the pro­gram to get us think­ing hard­er than ever about it.

All episodes of The Val­ue of Cul­ture: Cul­ture and Anar­chy (above), Cul­ture and the Anthro­pol­o­gists, Two Cul­tures, Mass Cul­ture, What’s the Val­ue of Cul­ture Today?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by Melvyn Bragg

Fran­cis Bacon on the South Bank Show: A Sin­gu­lar Pro­file of the Sin­gu­lar Painter

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

In May we post­ed about Mike Dun­can’s The His­to­ry of Rome pod­cast, which, upon reach­ing episode 179, had con­clud­ed the tale of the Roman Empire’s hey­day. Over its five-year run, Dun­can’s show amassed a large, enthu­si­as­tic audi­ence, most of whom have no doubt con­tin­ued their explo­ration of Roman his­to­ry else­where. It has even inspired some to launch his­to­ry pod­casts of their own, one of which presents itself as The His­to­ry of Rome’s direct suc­ces­sor in sub­ject, style, and tone. The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium (RSS — iTunes), which debuted in May, aims to recount the sto­ry of Roman Empire of Late Antiq­ui­ty and the Mid­dle Ages, now bet­ter known as the Byzan­tine Empire, from the years 476 through 1453. Though per­haps less often dis­cussed by the aver­age his­to­ry buff, the Byzan­tine Empire nonethe­less offers a wealth of his­tor­i­cal inter­est, espe­cial­ly, it seems, to pod­cast­ers; you may already have heard Lars Brown­worth’s show 12 Byzan­tine Rulers, which even­tu­al­ly land­ed him a book deal. And many more Byzan­tine sto­ries remain to tell.

Pier­son, by day a tele­vi­son crit­ic, explic­it­ly describes his project as both an unof­fi­cial sequel and an homage to The His­to­ry of Rome. “I liked the sim­pli­fi­ca­tion and expla­na­tion of the Roman sto­ry,” he writes in his intro­duc­to­ry post. “I liked the half an hour length. I liked Mike’s sense of humour and tim­ing. I liked his neu­tral tone which nev­er felt like it was pro­vid­ing an over­bear­ing opin­ion on the nar­ra­tive. When Mike announced he would be stop­ping with the fall of the West in 476 I con­sid­ered whether I could pos­si­bly take on the task of con­tin­u­ing the sto­ry. [ … ] Ini­tial­ly at least I hope to emu­late Mike’s style. I want to keep the rough struc­ture and neu­tral tone estab­lished on The His­to­ry of Rome because I think so high­ly of it. I hope you won’t see it as sim­ply an imi­ta­tion and doubt­less over time my own style will emerge.” This seems as hon­est an account as any of the way cre­ators work off of their inspi­ra­tions, and His­to­ry of Rome fans will no doubt lis­ten with inter­est to The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium for both the devel­op­ments in the tale and in Pier­son­’s way of telling it.

You can sub­scribe to The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium via RSS or iTunes.

And, all of you his­to­ry buffs, remem­ber that you can find free cours­es in the His­to­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

The Dig­i­tal Tip­ping Point: The Wild Ride from Pod­cast to Book Deal

The Decline and Fall of the Roman (and Amer­i­can?) Empire: A Free Audio­book

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.