THEor last October 18th At Londonse Royal Albert Hall there was no free place. Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, the two English historic authors of the podcast The Rest Is History, They set out sold out by telling the lives of Mozart and Beethoven.
Every month their podcast is downloaded from 12.5 million listeners and by now the fame of the two conductors is such that their tour in the theaters of the main American cities, which started in November, is already sold out in presale. But The Rest Is History It is not the only phenomenon of the genre.
From his first episode, dedicated to a comparison between Alessandro Magno and Hitler, Hardcore History, Podcast of the former radio conductor Dan Carlin, has conquered over five million listeners; Empireon colonizations, has scored over 30 million downloads.
Ludwig van Beethoven, at the center of a podcast event the rest is history in London, October 2024 (Getty Images)
And that’s not all, because the curiosity towards the past has extended from podcasts to publishing, to social networks. According to the surveys of Nielsen Book, a company that recorded editorial sales, in 2023 the British bought more history books than any other year since 1998 onwards. The historic Mary Beard has a stellar following, whether you write books whether you tell the Roman history on the BBC or via Podcast, while in the “Royal events” category Dana Schwartz stands out, with its podcast Noble Blood.
A portrait of Elizabeth I, 1588. In Noble Blood Dana Schwartz tells stories and crimes of English rulers (Getty Images)
In Italy among the 10 most followed podcasts on the subject, Francesca Ferragina, author of Stories of women in historya rediscovery of the great women of the past.
In the USA the history books grew by 6 percent in 2024 and, for the first time in an electoral year, sales in the “history” category have exceeded “politics” for 2 to 1. On the platform Substack, The newsletter Letters from An American He collected 1.8 million subscribers of the historic Heather Cox Richardson, and even on Tiktok, some time ago he depopulated the surprising question: “How many times a day do you think of the Roman Empire?”.
Even in our country history has never been so “current”: Alberto Angela, telling the latest discoveries of Pompeii on TV, has conquered more than 4 million spectators; The historian Alessandro Barbero boasts a fanbase almost devoted to the cult of personality, with groups on Facebook with explicit names such as “Alessandro Barbero, we are Vassalli”; Aldo Cazzullo grinds successes both on TV and in the bookstore, where he manages to impose more volumes at the same time in the ranking of the best -selling essays.
Alberto Angela in an episode of Ulysses, the pleasure of discovery, dedicated to Petra (Photo: Barbara Iedda)
Looking for a mirror in history
And then he wonders: why does the story suddenly affects us so much? A hypothesis is that an increasingly older world population is more interested in the past than in the present. But the look is also explained by the speed of the transformations in progress, and with the consequent need to find in the past a compass for complex times. Not surprisingly, other periods of profound change have been accompanied by the same mania. During the industrial revolution, the Victorians developed an obsession with dinosaurs, ancient Egypt and classical civilization. In the middle of the changes following the Second World War, Hollywood’s greatest successes were the Kolossal in costume: War and peace, Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Cleopatra. And last year the film Oppenheimer It seemed to echo the fears of those who fear a brake technological development.
Precisely for this “re -entry” of the past Francesco Benigno, professor of modern history at the Normal school of Pisa and author of The story at the time of today (The mill)believes that for decades, more than history, in the public speech he preaches his analogue: the historical memory.
The landing of Christopher Columbus in the New World. The history of the USA and the connections with today’s politics in Podcast Letters from An American (Getty Images)
“While history aims to put together the data to approach as much as possible to what really happened and to baste a collective reasoning, valid for everyone, the historical memory looks to the past starting from our peculiar identity” specifies. «This practice is legitimate, but stands out for its purpose: because history investigates the causal links regardless of those who study it; Historical memory seeks a mirror in the past, responds to a need to understand ourselves “concludes Benigno. In short, in the historical memory, that is, in the reinterpretation of the past that today is fashionable, to mention Anaïs Nin, “we don’t see things as they are, but for how we are”.
Narratives multiply
And here arises an unexpected that further multiply the historical offer: since people can now choose among more racial, sexual, professional identities, the related narratives also multiply. Alongside the events of the western world, stories of other continents and social groups, or narratives based on peculiar elements, bloom, originating new subgenres in response to the possible interests of the public.
No expiration date
Dan Snow, a TV presenter whose History Hit He is a highly successful podcast in Great Britain, he sensed among the former the potential of the niches and gained his program in a series of sub-philons, from ancient sex to the tudor’s genealogy, in order to intercept the fans of these stories. However marginal, the specific targets are however profitable because, unlike the topical transmissions, historical shows enjoy the advantage of not having an expiry date. Still The History of RomeMike Duncan’s podcast on Rome, finished in 2012, receives thousands of weekly downloads.
The myth of Rome – here the head of the statue of Emperor Constantine at the Capitoline Museums of Rome – is always in fashion as shown The History of Rome, English podcast (Getty Images)
The fact is that “Podcasts are more similar to a record album than a newspaper” summarizes the aforementioned Dan Carlin, which derives more profits from its archive than from the new episodes: the beauty of history “is that it is an evergreen”.
Another reason for growth of interest for historical issues lies in the way they are told. Rado the historians and populariars are the same people, Carlin always underlines, comparing the different communication skills of the Greek historian Herodotus and the poet Homer. Yet, more and more the use of a brilliant style also by specialists, such as our Barbero, and the addition of engaging audiovisual content have been able to attract a transversal audience, in turn favored by the fact that, unlike science, understanding the past does not require specialized knowledge.
Alessandro Barbero told the Matteotti case at the theater and on La7
“On the other hand, if they do not know how to explain and interest the public, historians should ask themselves what they are for” questions Francesco Filippi, historian and author of SEMISERIA guide for aspiring social historians (Bollati Boringhieri). “Just think of the Barbero phenomenon, born from the online diffusion of some university lessons, to clarify how academic rigor does not necessarily have to combine with a language for initiates”.
Thus, paradoxically, while the enrolled in humanistic faculties decrease all over the world, the story conquers increasingly large audiences, even among young people. It comes to think that there is a further reason why many shows like many: in an era marked by a growing solitude, in which social media do not help to overcome insulation, re -establishing the threads with the past makes part of a community, creates a sense of sharing of a common destiny. In the end, we are the story
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