I really enjoyed listening to the podcasts this week. I actually listened to three because I liked them so much and I have subscribed to the BBC podcasts in my Google reader so I’ll remember to go back to it in the future.

The first podcast I listened to was called “In the Beginning: Evolution and Creation in America” on the Backstory site. The podcast featured three history guys, one each from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. They started out by discussing the founding fathers’ views on religion, focusing particularly on Thomas Jefferson, his deism, and his interest in science. Of particular interest was the discussion of Jefferson’s fossilized bones, the lack of understanding of species extinction in the eighteenth century, and the connection between Jefferson’s desire to find these mysterious animals and the Lewis and Clark expeditions. They then moved on to discussing Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species and its unremarkable reception in the United States, which was followed by a more critical view as more and more children started attending public school, thus being exposed to the theory of evolution, and as people tried to understand the devastation people could inflict on others through wars such as WWI and WWII. They chronicle the Scopes Trial, including audio segments from the film Inherit the Wind throughout the show and interview a high school biology teacher from Dayton, Tennessee who disagrees with evolution. They next discuss the history of evangelism and creation science in the United States, noting that in its beginnings, creation science attempted to accommodate scientific views of nature that largely excluded religion, but by the 1980s, God was brought into the conversation. The program was very interesting in that it brought it featured the three historians, one of whom was Ed Ayers, who interviewed different people (experts and laypeople) about the subject, and featured audio clips from different time periods to highlight changing viewpoints. The show also featured a segment where callers could speak with the historians about their own thoughts/questions about the topic which generated interesting discussions not featured in the main body of the show. While I enjoyed the show, I also appreciated the extra features built into the site, such as an area for users to discuss the show with each other on the page and the further reading section that featured materials listeners could access about the topics highlighted in the show. For instance, as I was listening to the historians talk about Jefferson’s fossils, I wanted to know more. I found links to this information in the further reading section. Another interesting aspect of the site is the “In the Works” section where ideas for future shows are posted and users of the site can weigh in with ideas and questions they would like covered. The two callers featured on the above mentioned program were contacted because of their participation in this section of the site. Each story also features a series of tags user can access to find more stories of their interest.

On the BBC site, I listened to two podcasts: one about the Mughal Empre and one about the Indian Mutiny. I enjoyed them (obviously because I listened to two), but noticed the tone to be quite different from the Backstory site. While the Backstory site was more of a show featuring different types of discussion, engagement with audience, and audio clips of different media, the BBC podcasts featured historians talking to each other about the topic. No other media was featured. There is no engagement with the audience. People cannot comment or discuss the podcast. It is historians talking and users are meant to download the podcast and listen. I may sound critical, and I am a bit, because I approve of user engagement, but I still felt like the podcasts worked well for their purpose, which is to educate interest listeners by allowing them to listen to a conversation between experts.

When I think about these sites in the context of what we’ve been discussing throughout the quarter, I think the two sites do a good job of using digital media to accomplish their goals. The Backstory site clearly intends to engage the public, provide open access to different users from different backgrounds, utilize experts and the public in collecting and analyzing history, and connect information in a variety of ways by linking out to other sites, using tags, and encouraging discussion. I believe the BBC site is very different and not meant to engage the public in the same way, but I still think it also meets some of the goals of digital history – it allows the public to access information that they may not otherwise have by placing conversations between experts on the web for free. And I might add, there are a lot of these conversations. I think that the site tends to function as an open access archive to a wealth of information about history, culture, literature, science, and more.

The first thing I thought when listening to the podcasts was, “Awesome. I want to keep listening to these.” The second thing I thought was that these could be very useful in teaching. I have noticed that in the world history course I TA for, it is very difficult to cover all of the topics during lecture and I’m sure many of the students are a little bored from their text. I’m not saying that the text or the lecture should be replaced, but I do think that assigning a couple of podcasts a week, like the BBC podcasts, would be a fun, easy, free, and interesting way to supplement the traditional style.