His­to­ry is dying at U.S. col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties.  Enroll­ment in under­grad­u­ate his­to­ry cours­es is way down since 2010, and the num­ber of his­to­ry degrees award­ed annu­al­ly has like­wise been falling faster and faster.  The most recent data show a 9% nation­wide drop in his­to­ry degrees award­ed in 2014 com­pared to 2013, with an even sharp­er 13% decline at the nation’s top uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Yale, Har­vard, and Stan­ford. (1,2,3,4)  So, is his­to­ry just get­ting old?

On the con­trary.  At least out­side of acad­e­mia, his­to­ry has nev­er been more pop­u­lar.  Cul­tur­al icons includ­ing Barack Oba­ma and Bill Gates have cit­ed his­to­ry books such as Yuval Noah Harar­i’s Sapi­ens: A Brief His­to­ry of Mankind and Steven Pinker’s Enlight­en­ment Now: The Case for Rea­son, Sci­ence, Human­ism and Progress as among their favorite books of all time.  The His­to­ry Chan­nel has enjoyed a resur­gence in view­er­ship since 2013, and judg­ing by the recep­tion of more epic pro­duc­tions, from Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-win­ning movie Lin­coln in 2012 to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash hit musi­cal Hamil­ton in 2015, it’s clear that pub­lic hunger for his­to­ry is only grow­ing.  What, then, accounts for lack­lus­ter lec­ture hall atten­dance?

“Part of the prob­lem is that much of aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ry has become too eso­teric,” says pod­cast­er Brad Har­ris, who holds a PhD from Stan­ford in the his­to­ry of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.  “Course con­tent has been shift­ing away from big ideas like the rise of mod­ern sci­ence and democ­ra­cy to nar­row­er stud­ies of things like the pol­i­tics of emo­tion and cul­tur­al con­struc­tions, which many stu­dents find less rel­e­vant to their inter­ests.”  More­over, Har­ris con­tends that col­lege his­to­ry cours­es have nev­er been more cyn­i­cal.  “Too many pro­fes­sors dwell on what human­i­ty has done wrong–who we’ve oppressed, what we’ve destroyed–and not enough on what human­i­ty has done right–who we’ve lib­er­at­ed, what we’ve invent­ed.  Where’s the inspi­ra­tion?  It’s no won­der peo­ple are ditch­ing his­to­ry lec­tures.”  And now, so has Brad Har­ris.

Since leav­ing acad­e­mia in 2015, Har­ris has been work­ing full-time to offer an attrac­tive alter­na­tive for peo­ple who want to learn his­to­ry, pro­vid­ing con­tent that is as infor­ma­tive as a col­lege lec­ture but as enter­tain­ing as a cin­e­mat­ic pro­duc­tion: a pod­cast called How It Began: A His­to­ry of the Mod­ern World.  Avail­able every­where pod­casts are found, and also from his web­site, howitbegan.com, How It Began inter­prets a broad array of the most impor­tant sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, and cul­tur­al advance­ments in his­to­ry, from dog domes­ti­ca­tion to the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion.  Here is an excerpt from the show’s intro­duc­to­ry episode:

In each episode, we will fly through the cen­turies to fol­low the seeds of an inno­va­tion or dis­cov­ery as it blos­soms into one of the many fruits of moder­ni­ty.  Far from a cat­a­log of dead men and dates, How It Began offers a cin­e­mat­ic-like immer­sion into the sto­ries behind some of our species’ great­est achieve­ments.  The over­all theme?  Cel­e­bra­tion!  We are for­tu­nate to be descend­ed from men and women who dared to dream big and even die for the cause of progress.  Their work is unfin­ished, and some parts of moder­ni­ty are even worse than before.  But most are bet­ter, much bet­ter.  And we have more tools than ever to fix what’s still bro­ken.  

Brad Har­ris hopes his show’s focus on mod­ern progress will cap­ti­vate peo­ple who crave more inspir­ing explo­rations of his­to­ry, and judg­ing by How It Began’s recep­tion so far, he seems well on his way to achiev­ing exact­ly that.  

Episodes are between 30 and 60 min­utes long and released every month or so.  The pod­cast explores a wide range of top­ics, from the rise of mod­ern surgery and com­put­ers to the devel­op­ment of the Eng­lish lan­guage and the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion.  “Wolves to Dogs: The Ori­gin of our Alliance” was one of the most pop­u­lar episodes of Sea­son One.   In a more recent episode, Har­ris reveals the sur­pris­ing cor­re­la­tions between the spread of cof­fee con­sump­tion and the estab­lish­ment of mod­ern insti­tu­tions:

This is a guest post by Mor­gan Stew­art, an edu­ca­tion­al con­sul­tant and founder of With­in Reach Edu­ca­tion­al Con­sul­tants.

A crime was com­mit­ted dur­ing a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Then came a cov­er up and oth­er skull­dug­gery. Final­ly, there was a res­ig­na­tion. Nope, we’re not talk­ing about the tra­jec­to­ry of the Mueller inves­ti­ga­tion. We’re talk­ing about Watergate–the sub­ject of Slow Burn, a new, eight-episode pod­cast minis­eries from Slate.

Avail­able on iTunes, the web, and oth­er pod­cast play­ers, Slow Burn zeroes in on the ques­tions: “What did it feel like to live through the scan­dal that brought down a pres­i­dent? What was that strange, wild ride like?” Below, you can read the intro­duc­to­ry words from the pod­cast’s host, Leon Ney­fakh. And then stream the first episode called “Martha,” as in Martha Mitchell, wife of John Mitchell, the Attor­ney Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States under Pres­i­dent Nixon.

One day at the end of April 1973, Richard Nixon stood on a porch at Camp David and told John Ehrlich­man he want­ed to die. Nixon had sum­moned Ehrlich­man, his long-serv­ing domes­tic pol­i­cy advis­er, to tell him he was being fired from the White House.

Nixon had been dread­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, but he knew it had to be done. The Depart­ment of Jus­tice had recent­ly informed the pres­i­dent that Ehrlich­man could be fac­ing crim­i­nal charges. Nixon felt the walls clos­ing in.

Lat­er, Nixon would tell the jour­nal­ist David Frost how he gave his old friend the news: “I said, ‘You know, John, when I went to bed last night … I hoped—I almost prayed—I wouldn’t wake up this morn­ing.’ ” Accord­ing to Ehrlich­man, the pres­i­dent then began to sob. It would be 15 months before he resigned from office.

So, that’s how Richard Nixon felt as the Water­gate sto­ry went from a curi­ous bur­glary to a nation­al obses­sion. What was it like for every­one else? That’s the ani­mat­ing ques­tion behind my new eight-episode pod­cast series for Slate, Slow Burn.

Episode 1: Martha

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!