History Now: History Podcasts: an exciting avenue for historical research or yet more populist compromise?

In this episode of History Now 2025, the rising genre of History Podcasts is explored in a discussion between Geraldine Fela and Leigh Boucher from Macquarie University, chaired by Craig Barker from the University of Sydney.

In the ever-expanding podcast media universe, history is a significant player. Podcasts led by historians regularly feature in ‘top-ten’ download lists, and there is clearly an appetite amongst podcast listeners to hear experts interpret and make meaning from the past.  The contrast with declining trends in book sales by academic historians could not be sharper. Many within the discipline are understandably excited about the potential of podcasts to reach new audiences.  However, podcasting-the-past also poses big challenges.

Geraldine Fela and Leigh Boucher discuss what possibilities working in this form have opened up for historical interpretation, and how they've reached new audiences with their work.  What, if anything, did they have to ‘give up’ in the move from written history to aural storytelling, and has this been a comfortable transition? 

The History Now 2025 podcast series is brought to you by the History Council of NSW in partnership with the Chau Chak Wing Museum and the Vere Gordon Childe Centre at the University of Sydney.

This series has been supported in 2025 by the NSW Government through a grant from Create NSW.

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Episode Transcript

Catherine Shirley (00:02):
Welcome to the History Now 2025 podcast
series, brought to you by theHistory Council of New South
Wales in partnership with theChau Chack Wing Museum and the
Vere Gordon Childe Centre at theUniversity of Sydney.
In this episode, the risinggenre of history podcasts is
explored in a discussion betweenGeraldine Fela and Lee Boucher

(00:22):
from Macquarie University,chaired by Craig Barker from the
University of Sydney.
In the ever-expanding podcastmedia universe, history is a
significant player.
Podcasts led by historiansregularly feature in top 10
download lists, and there isclearly an appetite amongst
podcast listeners to hearexperts interpret and make

(00:45):
meaning from the past.
The contrast with decliningtrends in book sales by academic
historians could not besharper.
Many within the discipline areunderstandably excited about the
potential for podcasts to reachnew audiences.
However, podcasting the pastalso poses big challenges.

(01:05):
In this episode, Fela andBoucher discussed what
possibilities working in thisform have opened up for
historical interpretations andhow they've reached new
audiences with their work.
What, if anything, did theyhave to give up in the move from
written history to oralstorytelling?

(01:26):
And has this been a comfortabletransition?

Dr Craig Barker (01:32):
Welcome to the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the
University of Sydney, thecustodian of the university's
diverse collections of more than450,000 cultural objects,
artworks, and natural historyspecimens from around the globe.
It's a great, great honor tohave you with us this evening.
Before I begin, I would like toacknowledge that we're meeting

(01:53):
today on Gadigal land and to payour respects to the traditional
custodians, the Gaddi people ofthe Eoro Nation, and to
acknowledge the tens ofthousands of years of care for
country, waters, and skies thatthe Gadigal people have overseen
on this very land that we'remeeting.
And to also acknowledge that,of course, we're meeting on

(02:13):
unceded territory as well.
My name's Craig Barker.
I'm an archaeologist, aneducator, and I'm the head of
the public engagement team hereat the Chau Chak Wing Museum.
And in 2025, I decided my dancecard wasn't busy enough.
So I'm also the programdirector for the 2025 series of
History Now talks.
History Now is the annualseries of talks for the History

(02:37):
Council of New South Wales.
And this year, I'm pleased tosay that the series is
co-presented between the HistoryCouncil of New South Wales, the
Chau Chak Wing Museum, and mycolleagues here, and the Vere
Gordon Childes Centre at theUniversity of Sydney, a
relatively new researchinstitute dedicated to broader

(02:58):
historical investigation in allof its forms.
This series is made possiblebecause of Create New South
Wales's support as well.
It's my great honor to moderatetonight's presentations, but
before I introduce our twopresenters, I'd like to take
this opportunity to formallyintroduce Catherine, Catherine
Shirley, Executive and StrategicDevelopment Officer with the

(03:20):
History Council of New SouthWales, to speak more about the
supporters of the series.
Catherine, please.

Catherine Shirley (03:28):
Thank you, Craig.
And look, what a gloriousauditorium we're in tonight.
And it's absolutely fantastic.
We are thrilled from theHistory Council of New South
Wales's point of view to bepartnering with the Chau Chak
Wing Museum at Sydney Universityin this series this year.
Established in 2015 when HannahForsyth, Anna Clark, and

(04:04):
Melissa Bellanta took over theAustralian Studies Seminar
Series and renamed it HistoryNow.
The seminars have exploredcurrent and compelling issues
affecting the practice ofcontemporary history.
The series was taken up by UTS.
It's a wonderful thing.
There's a bit of a bidding warthat goes on at the beginning of

(04:25):
every year, and everyone says,yes, we want to have this
series.
And so it was taken up by UTSthrough Paul Ashton, Anna Clark,
and Paula Hamilton from 2020,with Kiera Lindsay making the
link between the History Councilof New South Wales in her role
as the vice president at thattime.
From 2021 to 23, the UTSAustralian Centre for Public

(04:48):
History hosted the series withsupport from venue partner, the
State Library of New SouthWales, which continued, this is
where you get the drum roll,which continued into 2024 when
our then vice president JesseAdams Stein convened History Now
uh series representing both ourorganization and the Australian

(05:10):
Centre for Public History.
In the last couple of years,we've witnessed our audience
grow from about 10 people in asmall university lecture room to
the size of what we seetonight.
And let's not forget, in 2024,we went digital.
We decided to take my littleiPhone into the State Library
venue with a Rode neck mic,clicked to the lectern, just

(05:34):
like that, and uh to recordHistory Now, which we then took
home and edited on free desktopsoftware.
Um, we then put it out on ourplatform through the History
Council site, and um and itflows through to Spotify and um

(05:54):
iHeart and a whole variety ofother ones as well, Apple, et
cetera, et cetera.
So we've now gone global.
This series is now global.
And um our funding body, theCreate New South Wales, you
know, through the New SouthWales government through Create
New South Wales, can't believetheir luck.
They're delighted that we'veactually expanded and engaged

(06:18):
with an audience which is largerthan 10 people in a room.
But we couldn't have done anyof this without our fantastic
other partners, our culturalpartners, who are so incredibly
long-term supporters of theHistory Council of New South
Wales and who contribute a lotof voluntary time to supporting

(06:38):
us.
So this is a great segue point.
Back to Craig.
So thank you very much.

Dr Craig Barker (06:45):
Thank you, Catherine.
So on to tonight'spresentation.
In the ever-expanding podcastmedia universe, history is a
significant player.
Podcasts led by historiansregularly feature in top 10
download lists, and there'sclearly an appetite amongst
podcast listeners around theglobe to hear experts interpret
and to make meaning from thepast.

(07:05):
I'll point you to the WallStreet Journal article of late
last year that uh had the statsfor the Rest is History podcast,
which alone saw more than 11million downloads per month in
2024.
Irrespective of the content orthe uh or your thoughts about
individual podcasts, there is aclear audience that are eager to

(07:29):
be engaged with historydiscussions and history
presentations.
The contrast with decliningtrends in book sales by academic
historians could not besharper.
And many within the disciplineof history, and indeed the
broader humanities, areunderstandably excited about the
potential of podcasts to reachnew audiences.
But as we're here tonight,podcasting the past also

(07:51):
represents a series of bigchallenges.
Geraldine Fela and Lee Boucherhave worked with the UTS Impact
Studio, Guardian Podcasts, andthe ABC to produce history
podcasts based on extensiveoriginal research.
And what we're going to behearing tonight is both their
personal experiences and I thinksome broader observations as

(08:15):
well about history podcasts moregenerally and what we may do.
Lee is an associate professorof modern history at Macquarie
University, where his researchexplores questions of race,
gender, and sexuality inAustralian political and social
history.
He's published works in aseries of academic journals, and

(08:36):
his most recent co-authoredbook is Personal Politics,
Gender, Sexuality, and theRemaking of Australian
Citizenship, published in 2024.
He's currently working on ahistory of HIV AIDS in and
around Darlinghurst, which willbe the topic of a podcast
released with the History Lablater this year.

(08:57):
And I believe one of the thingsyou'll be discussing today.
Following Lee's presentation,Geraldine will then come up to
the microphone.
Geraldine is a postdoctoralresearch fellow in the School of
Humanities at MacquarieUniversity.
Her research and teachingtraverses histories of gender
and sexuality, labor, socialmovements, and medicine.

(09:19):
Her first book, Critical Care,Nurses on the Front Line of
Australia's AIDS Crisis, waspublished last year through UNSW
Press.
In 2023, Geraldine was awardeda place in the ABC's annual Top
Five Humanities ResearchResidency Program and has since
developed a close workingrelationship or in partnership

(09:41):
with ABC Radio National, which Iknow will be one of the things
you'll discuss today.
In 2024 and into this year, shespent a year working as a
producer and an in-househistorian on the six-part radio
documentary series ConspiracyWar on the Waterfront, based on
her postdoctoral researchexamining the 1998 Waterfront

(10:02):
Dispute.
Can I ask everyone to giveGeraldine and Lee an applause?
And Leigh, I will invite you upto the microphone.

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (10:12):
Thank you, Leigh.
Thanks very much.
Just to add to thatacknowledgement, Geraldine and I
both at Macquarie, which is onthe unceded lands of the Darug
peoples.
That is, of course, more thanan acknowledgement.
It's us noting that the way wetell stories, how we present our
material, has a politics,right?

(10:34):
And that's something thatGeraldine and I have been
thinking a lot about over thepast 12 to 18 months or so, as
both of us have been involved inum collaborative projects to
produce podcasts.
So what I'm going to do now isjust kind of give some general
comments for about five minutesor so, just sketching out some
general ideas about podcasting,actually defining what a podcast

(10:56):
is, which is probably worth it.
Before Geraldine and I eachsort of talk about our
experiences trying to producepodcasts.
I'm still in the middle ofmine, whereas Geraldine's at the
end of hers.
So take that as you will.
So, and I just want to alsothank um uh thank you for the

(11:18):
opportunity.
Geraldine and I have beenhaving these conversations in
corridors at work, throughoffice doors, working through
various traumas.
Um it's been nice to sort ofhave the opportunity to think a
little bit more coherently anduh kind of consistently about
this.
So, podcasting for academichistorians, I think we could say
offers a set of kind ofseductive possibilities.

(11:40):
Um, we are in the context of adeclining social license for
academic history, as job cutsare showing us, right, at the
moment.
Um uh and the podcast explosionof the past two decades and
historical podcasts within itseem to offer large audiences
for our work.
And that seems very importantright now.

(12:00):
I think most historians arecommitted not just to
contributing and advancing ascholarly conversation between
themselves about the past, butusually to making a contribution
to historical understandingbeyond our disciplinary
communities.
We want to talk to peopleoutside universities.
I don't think many historiansin universities actually see
themselves inside an ivorytower.
Most historians, or many, somehistorians in universities, I

(12:23):
saw that look from one of mycolleagues.
Um, many historians inuniversities see themselves as
working for public institutionsand therefore can contributing
to some form of publicconversation.
Right?
Podcasts seem to offer an avenueto participate, contribute to
that conversation.
Um, we're also being encouragedby our institutions at the
moment to disseminate ourresearch widely and demonstrate

(12:46):
impact.
Um, so there's some kind ofinstitutional imperatives
pushing us in this direction aswell.
So podcasts might be oursaviors, or at least that's how
it can feel.
And I'm reminded of somecomments from Robert Rosenstone,
who's a scholar who writesabout historical film.
He's writing about historicalfilm in the mid-80s.
And he wrote the followingEnter film, The Great

(13:06):
Temptation, film, thecontemporary medium still
capable of both dealing with thepast and holding a large
audience?
How can we not suspect thatthis is the medium to use to
create narrative histories thatwill touch large numbers of
people?
Yet, is this dream possible?
Can one really put history intofilm?
History that will satisfy thoseof us who devote our lives to

(13:29):
understanding, analysing, andrecreating the past in words?
Or does the use of filmnecessitate a change in what we
mean by history?
And would we be willing to makesuch a change?
The issue comes down to this Isit possible to tell historical
stories on film and not lose ourprofessional and intellectual

(13:50):
souls?
That's a question Geraldine andI have been asking for the past
kind of 12 months or so, butabout history in MP3.
What does it mean to tell oralhistories, not oral histories,
but oral histories for peopleinside people's ears?
There's a lot of veryoptimistic writing about
podcasts in general and historypodcasts in particular.

(14:11):
Um, and we remain, I think,pretty optimistic.
But I think historians mightneed to take more seriously both
the production and distributionlandscape of podcast histories
as well as the particularitiesof making histories for people's
inside people's ears for oralhistories.
These questions matter as weboth assess what we think
podcasts can do and fantasizeabout what our own might do.

(14:34):
Um so a bit of ground clearing,what is a podcast?
It's a word we kind of use nowin a very naturalized way, but
it's actually quite a recentword where historians we
probably should recognize that.
It was first coined in 2004 bya British journalist.
It's a very recent term, it's avery recent media form, um, to
describe a form of downloadableaudio that was uniquely suited

(14:55):
to what was then a veryimportant piece of technology,
the iPod, which has now, ofcourse, disappeared for most
people, um, hence podcast.
Uh a year later, the US NewOxford Dictionary just declared
it word of the year.
So that's 2004.
It's kind of landing in thiskind of moment.
The downloadable, um uh thesedownloadable audio files had

(15:18):
been part of the Web 2.0revolution and had a few key
characteristics.
First, they were easy to produceand distribute and compressed
large amounts of audioinformation into small digital
footprints.
So you didn't need a high levelof technology, technical
knowledge to record them, andthey were easy to distribute and
you could take them with you.
So that did represent somethingquite new in terms of a kind of

(15:40):
form.
Um, they were downloadable andthus didn't need an internet
connection to listen to them.
So you could listen to them inyour own time.
Um, and they were distributedvia RSS feeds, which might I
didn't really know what that wasactually myself until quite
recently.
But RSS stands for reallysimple syndication.

(16:00):
And it meant that listeners,unlike in radio or in broadcast
kind of media, subscribeddirectly to RSS feeds, and
producers would then pushcontent to people who subscribed
to them.
Podcasts still work within thatthat kind of that that
framework of people subscribing.

(16:21):
So they're not a broadcastmedium.
Broadcasters are gettinginvolved in podcasts, but as a
form, they weren't designed tobroadcast.
They were actually designed forspecific subscriber-based
audiences, and that's somethingI think is worth thinking about.
There was a lot of earlyoptimism about direct engagement
with audiences as a consequenceof this, people kind of
directly engaging.

(16:41):
Um, do-it-yourself kind ofpossibilities, the escape from
the limitations of commercialkind of imperatives.
There's a lot of reallycelebratory kind of commentary.
Um, and it seemed in the firstdecade or so like a
democratizing revolution, as allkinds of content produced by
amateurs was making its way intothis emerging media ecology.
Laura J.
Stanley described podcasting in2016 as a lawless frontier with

(17:07):
an ever-expanding horizon.
The cumulative effect is amassive pile on piling on of
audio content without agovernor.
It's Lord of the Flies up inhere, and no one has the conch.
That's 2016.
I don't think it's as lawlessanymore.
There's been a consolidation ofgenre, a consolidation of
studios, there's been aconsolidation that's gone on.

(17:29):
And part of that consolidationwas happening actually as those
words were written.
And it was partly a consequenceof Serial, that podcast series
that really it was actually partof a whole generation of
podcasts that emerged at aboutthat time, highly very well
produced, high-quality,immersive audio storytelling,
um, uh very popular and thatwere driven by a very particular

(17:51):
way of telling stories.
They were driven by the idea ofthe detective kind of discovery
kind of model, the narratorleading you through over a
series to discover a truth atthe end.
Uh so while there's somepodcast kind of enthusiasts who

(18:12):
like to talk about the way inwhich this is a form that's very
new, that's very different, inlots of ways podcasts adopt and
adapt existing kind of forms ofradio, existing forms of
storytelling, um, but in a newform and with some new
consequences.
In particular, the kind ofintimacy of the podcast is quite
important and something thatwe've had to think you have to
think about quite a lot.

(18:33):
I'd also note that the form isstill transforming, it's not
stable.
Um if you say the word podcastto a 22-year-old young man, he
probably thinks you're talkingabout something on YouTube.
So podcasting for lots of youngmen is two blokes sitting in a
room on video talking to eachother.
So we think about podcasting assomething for your ears.

(18:55):
For it's still a form that'sevolving.
And for some people, podcastingmeans two guys chatting on a
couch, probably saying somepretty anti-feminist stuff.
Um uh, so it's still kind oftaking shape.
It's still, there's stillthings going on.
Um the thing to note here isthat history podcasts are a big
part of this landscape.
They're popular.

(19:16):
There's usually one or twohistory podcasts in a top 10 or
top 20 list.
But in this kind, in the worldthat we're now in, those
podcasts are usually produced bylarge studios or existing media
companies.
So the kind of DIY amateurfantasy is not borne out in
where the big listenership is.

(19:37):
Um, there's a few reasons forthat, not least of which is that
it's a subscriber-based medium,so it's very hard to generate
an audience from scratch.
So the podcasts that do reallywell are the podcasts that are
regular, they happen every week,and they generate um audiences.
For academic historians who arekind of dipping in and out of
the form, that poses a realchallenge because we fantasize

(19:59):
about big audiences, butactually you need to work with a
podcast that already maybe hasa subscriber base, already has
an audience built in.
Um and you might know, mightnot know what that audience
looks like or is, whereas thepeople who are producing the
podcast will.
So there's things to thinkabout with audience there.
Um, okay.
That's just some things tothink about.

(20:20):
Um, we'll talk more about it.
We're gonna have a bit of aconversation after we talk, but
I just want to talk you throughthe podcast that I'm currently
producing with um History Lab.
Hi.
Um uh, which is a podcastprovisionally entitled Community
Through Catastrophe.
And it's a podcast about theexperience of what we might call

(20:42):
the crisis years of HIVAIDS inDarlinghurst, which is between
the mid-80s and the kind ofmid-90s.
Um, it's going to be amulti-episode kind of audio doc
um that draws on oral historyinterviews with people who
lived, worked, and socialized inand around Darlinghurst in the
80s and 90s.
Um, this was the worst years ofthe epidemic in Australia, um,

(21:05):
but this was also perhaps itsepidemiological center in
Australia.
Okay, so about 85% of the casesbefore 96 of HIV and AIDS are
amongst men who have sex withmen.
Um, around 60% of those are inNew South Wales, and at least
half of those are in Sydney'sinner east.
So this is the kind ofepicenter of the epidemic.
Um, and in this project, I waskind of interested in looking at

(21:30):
this kind of local history.
It's the neighborhood where Ilive.
Um, and I was interested inkind of thinking this story is
often being told in verynational kind of framing in
Australia, a national story ofHIV.
I was interested in thinkingabout well, what happens if we
tell kind of an oralhistory-based story about people
living through the epidemiclocally?

(21:51):
Um I was also a little troubledby what we might call a kind of
almost prideful story about theAustralian response to HIV, um,
which is very centered oncommunity coming together, a
kind of collaboration betweencommunity and government to
produce a great response, um,which gets on top of

(22:12):
transmission rates reallyquickly, has whole regimes of
care, all of which are in someways true.
Um but work by people likeGeraldine actually and others
has really begun to trouble thatstory.
And I wondered what wouldhappen if we took the national
out of the picture and made it alocal story.
What kind of what kind ofnarrative would emerge of those

(22:36):
um of those years?
Um, the existing oral historycollections in Australia have
really focused on a specificgroup of people.
Historians tend to go andinterview people they recognize
or that look like them or livelike lives that they recognize.
They tend to go and interviewpeople who are politically

(22:57):
engaged, who read the newspaper,who'll turn up at a community
meeting.
Um, that's not most of thepeople who lived through the
epidemic in Darlinghurst.
Um, those the people I was kindof interested in capturing, at
least in part, were the peoplewho would often be described as
part of the commercial scene,which is a kind of byword for
not politically engaged.

(23:18):
Um, and so I was interested inputting them at the center of
the story and seeing what itkind of looked like.
We're still in production, butthe basic arc and argument for
the series I think is in place.
Um, and I'm gonna play you somekind of working draft excerpts.
Um uh and one of the kind ofthings that we're kind of

(23:39):
working through at the momentis, and one of the things that
I've had to learn is that I'mgonna have to be a character in
the story.
Um, which you'd think I'd love,but I don't.
Um, because it turns out I'mvery attached to conventional
notion of historians and kind ofobjectivity um and not having a
position.
So being forced to put myselfinto the kind of narrative has

(24:01):
been a challenge in particularkinds of ways.
Um and and we'll talk, we cantalk more about um some of the
things, other things that I'velearned.
But I just want to play you acouple of excerpts of what I
think we've been able to doreally well, um, or some of the
things that really excite me.
Um, the first episode is goingto kind of trace the emergence

(24:22):
of what we might call a queersocial and sexual world in
Darlinghurst over the 70s andearly 80s.
So it's kind of, it's it's moreabout the years before the
epidemic hits.
And this um is some kind ofincredible work that um someone
on the production team,Michelle, produced um for Ep
One, which weaves together a setof people reflecting on what
it's like, what it was like tolive in Darlinghurst in the late

(24:45):
70s and 80s.
And I just want to kind of playthat to you to give you a sense
of of the way we've been ableto use oral histories, but that
I definitely couldn't do if Iwas working with the written
word.
Hold on, that's later.
Here wego. [section of podcast is played]

Interviewee 1 (25:06):
And there was a lot of movement backwards and
forwards, you know, um, peoplewalking to and from the cross to
Darlinghurst.
Um, I mean, you know,Darlinghurst Road, the wall, all
of that.
It was very cruisy, um, it wasbusy.
Same the other way as well,walking up and down Crown
Street.

Interviewee 2 (25:24):
Look at where the hospice is now, that that feed.
There could be 500 people therepicking each other up and
cruising up and down the streetand and and chatting each other
up and disappearing off.

Interviewee 3 (25:36):
And if you live really in the inner city and you
work around that area, you'rewalking, and so your whole life
is different.
You see the street in adifferent way.
You're not in a car or a bus oron a train, you're actually
living on the street as you'rewalking.

Interviewee 4 (25:52):
You know, the street life was fabulous.

Interviewee 5 (25:54):
Just, you know, like us, I guess, just groups of
people doing their thing andinteracting and coming together
and so we used to sit down everynight at the scaffold at the
fountain, and the whole worldwould go past you from the gym.
Yeah.
Because Dunning has very famousfor being like the plumber when
you go to places like Italy,you know, and you know,

(26:15):
everything gets done on thestreet.

Interviewee 3 (26:17):
I mean, that's what that time was when you're
walking along Oxford Street oraround that area, you're bumping
into people constantly.

Interviewee 5 (26:25):
That's the word bump.
A bump into.
You know, so you know when yousee that person, oh Peter told
me you bump into him.
I bump into Peter, he's got aterrible haircut.

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (26:36):
It's really sad to me because the
next line he says, and then youbump into him later on the dance
floor.
But that's ended up not in thatedit, but it's definitely going
to come back in.
Um uh, so you know, that firstepisode basically traces this
story of this intense world ofkind of social connection with
people living in a neighborhooddeeply connected with and to
each other.

(26:57):
Um uh something I stillexperience in in some ways
today, I think.
Um the second episode looks atwhat happened when the epidemic
hit, that incredibly connectedand intensely kind of networked
community.
And it turns out that thinkingabout that local networked kind
of dimension of the story reallyhelped me to explain how the

(27:17):
epidemic unfolded because itcreated a certain kind of
intensity and a certain kind ofcapacity for invention um and uh
uh experimentation.
And one of the reallysurprising things, I've
discovered lots of surprisingthings in conducting these oral
history interviews.
Um, but one of the surprisingthings that I discovered, in

(27:39):
part because of who I chose tointerview was a widespread use
of steroids by gay men early onin the epidemic to treat AIDS
wastage, which becomes anestablished medical treatment in
the mid to late 90s.
But I discovered a whole bunchof guys talking about how they

(28:00):
were doing it with each otherbecause they used steroids for
bodybuilding and they thought itwould help, and it turns out
that it did.
And so there's this kind ofqueer experimentation with care
going on.
This is a really interestingexample of that.
Um, I'm aware of time, so I'mnot gonna play the audio, but
I've got some lovely kind of uhaccounts of people talking about

(28:21):
steroid use amongstbodybuilders sliding into
steroid use as a way to treatAIDS wastage.
Um, and and I we kind of usethat to think through kind of
queer experiments with care.
Um, and the final episode ortwo um actually makes an
argument about the kind of theways in which that um incredible

(28:42):
intensity and set of networkedconnections became something
that was difficult to bear inthe worst years of death.
That actually that this umintensely networked community um
became it became something thatwas almost too much to bear and
impossible to escape.
So the actual epidemic itself,the thing that had made it

(29:03):
bearable became ironically thething that made it unbearable
when the death rates reallyrose.
So that's kind of where we end,which is a very depressing place
to end.
Um and it's a depressing placefor me to end right now.
Um but I'm gonna turn over toGeraldine, who's gonna talk
about hers.
There we go.

Dr Geraldine Fela (29:26):
Hi everyone, um I'm just gonna set a timer on
my phone so I don't sorry, I'vejust lost my slide.
There we go.
Um hi everyone.
Um thank you so much, Lee.
Um, I feel like I've got to,you know, a lot to kind of
bounce off from there and reallylooking forward to our
conversation.

(29:47):
Um, but first of all, I'll talkyou through a little bit about
my project and my work.
So um my podcast is called well,not mine, the the podcast I
worked on was called ConspiracyWar on the Waterfront, and it
was pretty Produced by theFeatures Unit at ABC Radio
National as part of the Rewindprogram.
So it's part of a six-parthistorical investigation, which

(30:08):
tells the story of the 1998Patrick's dispute between the
Maritime Union of Australia andPatrick Stevedors.
So to make the podcast, I wason leave from Macquarie for a
year and employed full-time as aproducer and a kind of expert
historian on the series.
So it was a little bit of adifferent experience from Lee
kind of from the outset.

(30:29):
So I had kind of two roles.
I was actually learning thenuts and bolts of radio
production, scripting and audioediting.
And I um was also, I appear onthe series in conversation with
the um with the narrator JanFran, and I also was doing
historical research for it.
So the series is based off mypostdoctoral research, which is

(30:51):
a national history of thedispute.
And I'm an oral historian bymethod, like Lee.
So you can imagine that I wasvery excited to uh embark on
this project with the ABC.
And the idea in particular forme of being able to maintain the
orality of the sources that Igather and use in history making
was very, very exciting.

(31:12):
Um though, of course, it's notso straightforward as that.
And I'm sure we'll we'll talk alittle bit more about that.
Um but before I get into thepodcasting bit, um I just want
to talk you through a little bitthe kind of story because not
everyone in the room will befamiliar with this dispute.
Um so for those who aren't, itwas a huge industrial and
political confrontation in thelate 90s, 1998, often likened to

(31:37):
the miners' strike in the UKand the um and Reagan's sacking
of the air traffic controllersin the US.
It's kind of the greatAustralia's great sort of
showdown between labor andcapital of the neoliberal age.
Um and to summarize it reallyquickly, on April 7, 1998, 1400
warfees, all of the members ofthe Maritime Union of Australia,

(31:58):
were sacked and locked out oftheir workplace by Chris
Corrigan, who is the managingdirector of Patrick Stevedors.
Um to describe him in today'slanguage, he was kind of move
fast, break things, disruptor,um, but like less cool.
Like that was that was kind ofhis vibe.
Um and he had trained analternative non-union or scab

(32:22):
workforce with which to replacethe MUA on dramatically reduced
wages and conditions.
He was ultimately unsuccessful.
Uh, there was a huge industrialand political campaign and
response from the widercommunity and trade union
movement, huge mass acts ofcivil disobedience,
demonstrations, picket lines.
Um, and the the sackings werechallenged in court by the

(32:45):
union.
They also alleged that theHoward government and the
company had illegally conspiredto sack the workforce.
And ultimately the MUA got backto work, but they took some
really big blows.
So hundreds of jobs were lostand working conditions were
severely diminished.
So the series tells this story,beginning with the lead-up and

(33:05):
the planning that did happen inoffices of the Howard
government.
Um, and it takes the audience,you know, through the lockout,
the picket lines, the courtcase, the return to work, and
the kind of mop-up afterwards.
So, in one sense, Conspiracy isquite a straightforward audio
documentary program.
We interviewed people who areinvolved on both sides.

(33:26):
So, Warfees, union officialslike Greg Combe and MUA
officials, also members of thenon-union or SCAB workforce, uh
John Howard, Chris Corrigan, um,Peter Reith is dead, but we
spoke to some members of hisstaff.
And these cut these interviewsare cut together with really
incredible material from the ABCarchives, which you can imagine

(33:47):
was just a gold mine, like apleasure to go through.
Uh, and Jan Fran narrates thestory.
Uh, each episode has a numberof conversations between myself
and Jan, where I kind of explainhistorical context, some of the
research I've done, andsometimes offer some
interpretation.
I'm going to play you a clipfrom the first episode, um,

(34:09):
which is my absolute favoritekind of two minutes.
Um, I didn't cut this audio.
Uh, my colleague at the ABC,Kirsty Melville, did.
I think it's absolutelybeautiful.
Um, and a really good example,I think, of what we as
historians and especially,especially oral historians, kind
of hope for when we're thinkingabout podcasting history, what

(34:29):
we find so seductive about theidea of it.
So I'll just play it now.
Bear with me because I don'thave the original audio because
it's owned by the ABC.
So I have to play from here.
So apologies about that.
Listen to the ABC ad.

Dr Craig Barker (34:47):
ABC listen.

ABC Announcer (34:49):
Podcasts, radio, news, music, and more.
A warning that this episode ofRewind contains strong language.
It's 6 a.m.
on the 8th of April, 1998.
Twenty-one-year-old MichelleEmmett is on her way to work at

(35:11):
Melbourne's East Swanson job.
She doesn't love the earlystarts, but she does love her
job.

ABC Interviewee 1 (35:17):
I was an electrician for Patrick's
Stevadors, and I was afourth-year apprentice, just
coming out of my time.
She's this close to finishingher apprenticeship.
I was the first femaleapprentice at Patrick's.
I've always been a little bitout of the box.
I'll never forget my first daywalking into a really big mess

(35:39):
room of blogs.
And there was lots of pictureson the wall of females.
They weren't expecting me.
It was quite a funny lookingmap.
They quickly closed the doorand said, You can come back in
half an hour.
I was driving to work down thefootball room, and I was
listening to the radio as youdo.
It was 6 30 a.m.
in the morning.

(36:00):
And on the radio they they hadsaid something about look-up on
the docks, and I thought, turnthe radio.
And turned around the cornerand Billy fellow.
There was just cars everywhere,people everywhere, and I

(36:37):
thought this is this is real.
And I tried to drive up throughthe boom gate and they said,
no, no, you you can't come inhere.
And I just I was in shock.

Dr Geraldine Fela (36:48):
So for me, what I love about this clip,
there's a few things.
I mean, it packs so much in.
Like you, this would take youlike three pages minimum.
I mean, not even a whole book,basically.
Like, there is so muchinformation in that.
It sets the historical scene ina very visceral embodied way, I
think, which is I think whatwe're we're hoping for.

(37:09):
But I also love Michelle'svoice, a woman's voice, starting
a story about the MUA.
Um, and we use that to kind ofjar the listener into attention.
It's a way to bring or hint atthe complexity of the past and
the complexity of this story.
And her voice sits alongsidethese more expected voices of

(37:30):
the men shouting on the picketline.
It's also a bit disorientating.
We're a bit confused aboutwhat's going on in the same way
that Michelle is confused.
So for me, it kind of encourageshistorical empathy.
We want to empathize withMichelle, but it also makes the
past a bit of a foreign country.
Like what is happening?
Who is she?

(37:51):
And you know, it's just we wehave this sense of confusion and
curiosity.
And this could only be done inan oral medium.
You just could not do that onpaper.
Um, so you know, this I thinkis what we are hoping for in a
lot of ways.
Um, it's a it's an engagingrecreation of the past, which is

(38:11):
built from this composite oforal sources or materials.
There are all kinds ofcomplications associated with
this, which I'm sure we'll getto into the in the discussion.
But I think you can kind of seewhat I'm getting at in terms of
what we're kind of hoping for.
There's another hope that weinvest in podcasting history

(38:31):
that comes up a lot in thescholarship and in discussions
um between historians.
And this one I want to unpack alittle bit more.
And this is the idea that thiskind of history making might
draw or show the audience intothe archive and into the
historical process.
Um, and this I think is verydifferent and much harder to do.

(38:52):
And I'm not convinced that wecan do it.
We might be able to, I'm justnot a hundred percent convinced.
Um, so I'm gonna play youanother clip, but before I do a
bit of background.
So, as the title of the podcastsuggests, there was an element
of conspiracy in this wholestory.
It seemed at the time thatHoward, um that the Howard

(39:13):
government, who were kind ofnewly elected, you know, very
hyped up to pursue their radicalagenda, were intricately
involved in this plan to sackthe MUA.
And in the course ofresearching for the podcast, I
did find some new documentaryevidence in the National
Archives that supported theallegation of conspiracy and
further implicated thegovernment and John Howard in

(39:34):
some of the more controversialuh episodes, in particular the
training of serving andex-military personnel uh in
Dubai to replace the MUA.
So, in the final episode, we doa reveal of this kind of smoking
gun.
And I'm gonna begin, I'm gonnaplay you a clip that kind of
takes you into the reveal.
It starts in the archive in akind of general overview of the

(39:56):
archive and then takes youthere.
Um I'm interested to hear whatpeople think.

Interviewee 6 (40:01):
Um look, Jen, I think it's really unlikely.
Um, from going through hisdiaries, it's pretty clear that
Peter Reith was all over everystage of this: the planning, the
execution, the outcome.
This was not a ministerialoffice, this was not a minister
that was waiting in the wingsfor the Stephen Oz to move on

(40:23):
reform.
And it's my view that at pointsthey were actually initiating
and leading the strategy forreform, a process that resulted
in the Dubai Affair and thesacking of the 1400 MUA members
in April.
So long before the lockout,he's constantly talking to

(40:45):
people about how to make bigchange on the wharves.
He's talking to all kinds ofbig business names like Dick
Pratt about exactly what shouldhappen.
And then once we get to thedispute, his granular detail of
what is happening is incredible.
Like he knows the exact roadthat the police are gonna
marshal on to try and break thepicket line on the 17th of April

(41:10):
in Melbourne.
Um, he has this very kind ofintricate, detailed knowledge of
exactly what's happening on theground.
This is, you know, a ministerwho is certainly not waiting in
the wings.
And I think that the diary hassome real insights into, I
guess, the kind of mindset orwhat I might call the kind of

(41:30):
ideological position of thegovernment on this dispute and
on the MUA.
And I think the really clearexample of that for me was as
the dispute is wrapping up,Reith and Corrigan are in
constant communication.
And when Reith finally gets thenumbers about how many wharfies
will be made redundant, hescribbles in his diary 700
bludgers weeded out.

(41:52):
And he used that word bludgers.
He did.
Yeah.
Well, that's telling, isn't it?
I think it's really telling.
And I think it's importantbecause the government always
claimed that this wasn'tideological, that this dispute
was just a kind of technicalquestion around efficiency.
Um, but saying 700 bludgersweeded out is a pretty

(42:14):
ideological statement, and itsays a lot about how that
government viewed the MaritimeUnion of Australia and viewed
Wharfies.

ABC Interviewee 2 (42:21):
Yeah, bludgers is very different to
workers and verydifferet to wharfies.
That's right, it's a verydemeaning term.
There's one more document we'veuncovered, and it's one that
goes all the way to the top.

Dr Geraldine Fela (42:35):
I found a letter buried in some
correspondence files.
It's a letter from lateSeptember 1997.
And in it, it kind of outlinesthe state of play and waterfront
reform.
It says the Webster report iscoming, it outlines the strategy
that will we know will play outin the first quarter of '98
with the lockout of Web Dock,and then in April the lockout of

(42:56):
Patrick's workers across thecountry.
And it talks about reactivatingthe training of Australians
offshore.
But this isn't the mostinteresting part of the letter.
What's most interesting is whoit's addressed to, and who's
that?
John Howard.
So I'll wrap up and we can kindof talk about this more in the

(43:16):
the um the discussion.
But I guess the two things thatI think from that is one, the
kind of very long discussion ofReese's diary, which is like a
little bit boring at times.
That's the reality ofhistorical research, right?
The big find, the kind ofsmoking gun, very rare, only

(43:36):
relevant to very particularhistories.
But necessarily through becauseof the nature of the podcasting
form, that that gets elevated.
And it makes sense in thisstory.
Um, absolutely.
But it's um, you know, it issomething for us to grapple
with, I think, in terms of whenwhen we're communicating the
historical process, are wecommunicating what we actually

(43:59):
do?
Um but I'll leave it there forfor discussion.

Dr Craig Barker (44:05):
So firstly, thank you very much for both of
those presentations, which werefantastic.
Thank you for giving me themental image of Chris Corrigan
as the uncool disruptor aswell. Um, it's a name I haven't
thought about for a very longtime.
Um, the aim is we'll have ashort chat, and then if we have
some time, I will invite somequestions from the floor as
well.
So start having a think aboutif there's anything that's

(44:28):
popped up in your mind.
But the one clear thing fromboth your presentations is how
excited you are about podcastingas a possibility.
And I think that's come uhacross clearly in both of the
recordings as well.
What excites you in terms ofthe form uh and its capacity to

(44:48):
actually really um expand uhhistory engagement?
How do you how do you see, youknow, what excites you about
it's it as a form ofcommunicating history?

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (45:05):
Turn that on.
Um you know, if you're workingwith uh oral histories and then
writing about them, you'returning an uh oral source into a
written source and you lose anincredible amount in that moment
of turning it into something onthe page.
So the possibility of workinguh in the form that you've
collected the material in uhfeels pretty magical and uh

(45:28):
something that's pretty amazingto share with the kind of
audiences or consumers or thepeople who who are kind of
listening to the history asopposed to reading it.
So that that does feelincredibly exciting.
That's particular to kind oforal history.
Um and also the capacity tocommunicate um emotional
complexity, breaks in voices,ambivalence, uncertainty.

(45:49):
Um there's a lot that you cankind of communicate very
quickly, um, which on thewritten page, you might be able
to communicate that kind ofcomplexity, but someone won't
feel it.
Um so the the idea that you canmake your listener feel
complexity um is very, very,very exciting.
Um, and particularly if you'reworking with oral histories
where that's actually whatyou're trying to do.
Um so it feels like a kind ofnatural home for that that that

(46:13):
mode of storytelling.

Dr Geraldine Fela (46:16):
Um yeah, it's the same for me, absolutely.
Like the frustration of takinga beautiful, like beautiful
piece of audio that you heardand were moved in the moment,
and then putting it on the pageand it just being like nothing.
It's really hard to deal with,you know.
Um, so that's very exciting.
I guess the other thing I whichI realized working at the ABC is

(46:39):
the the ability to actually,you know, to create this collage
of source material, um, whichwe do in the written word in a
different way, um, but you cando it so succinctly um in in the
um in podcasting, which isyeah, really, really exciting.
Um the form also comes with withchallenges that Lee and I have

(47:00):
discussed.
Um, you know, there's I I guessI kind of alluded to one there
um uh uh with that final clipwhere the you know the the drive
for for narrative and forattention, which is all right,
like that's not incorrect in anyway, but that is part of the
form, is like looking foraudience, grabbing people's

(47:22):
attention, holding theirattention in, you know, in in
very particular ways, does bendthe way we tell histories.
So, you know, in in thatexample, it bends it towards the
smoking gun, um, which is, likeI said, not really the reality
of history making was verysatisfying to be able to say

(47:43):
Howard's a liar.
Don't get me wrong.
Like I was absolutely thrilled.
I was like, we're putting thatin.
But, you know, what are weactually communicating about the
historical process?
It's not necessarily, you know,very accurate.
I'm not sure it is actuallybringing people into the process
in the way that we think itmight be.

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (48:01):
Yeah, I'm just gonna follow up with that.
I think um the kind of truecrime detective genre that's
come to dominate the podcast ingeneral as the kind of, you
know, the detective taking youthrough the story as they
discover the truth.
Um uh lots of history podcastsfollow that model.
You know, the kind of chittychat rested history model where

(48:21):
it's two blokes talking,pontificating about the past
isn't that.
Um, but the kind of immersiveaudio storytelling that we're
talking about has sort ofadopted fully and and really
lent hard into this um narratoras detective, um, which
actually, again, really, reallybends.
That's a great way of puttingit, it really bends an

(48:43):
understanding of what thehistorical process is.
We think, you know, I hadassumed that that genre, kind of
reflexively, I had assumed, oh,that's really exciting because
it means we get to talk aboutour process, right?
It means we get to talk aboutthe complexity of interpreting
evidence.
It means you might have aconversation about, oh, some
scholars say this, some youknow, like, no, no, no, no, no,

(49:03):
no.
That genre is about a detectivefollowing something and finding
out the truth.
And and you can do things withthat, but that's kind of the way
that genre of storytellingtends.
Um, and so you're you're kindof wrestling with that a little
bit.

Dr Craig Barker (49:19):
Well, there's a degree of audience expectation
because of the boundaries of themedia as well, isn't there?

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (49:24):
Yeah, I really do.
I think you know theconsolidation of history of
podcasts in general and historypodcasts in particular in the
past kind of 10 years has meantthat audiences have come to
expect certain certain ways ofpresenting stories.
Um and uh if you're having afantasy about going into that
space, you need to know howthose storytelling conventions

(49:46):
are working.
Yeah.

Dr Craig Barker (49:48):
So I'd I'd like to pick up on that conversation
because during yourpresentation you talked about
the challenges of the thetraditional notion of the
historian as the uh as the uhthe observer.
Um, I mean, you know, how didyou both reconcile those notions
with this dramatic narrativestorytelling element that both

(50:10):
of your sets of podcasts havelent into?

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (50:14):
I'll at least start with that one.
Um damn it, I was gonna let yougo first.
Um uh I have a I have a fewthoughts about that.
Um uh one of the things I amstill struggling with is voice.

(50:34):
Um and the ways in which uh Ihave learnt to understand that
if I'm gonna be a voice insomeone's ear for three hours,
then they're probably gonnaimagine me as a human.
Um and my training as anhistorian has not set me up to

(50:56):
think about that at all.
Um and actually, when you go andlisten to a lot of history
podcasts, the voices that you'rehearing are straight white men.
Um that's what we generallyspeaking associate with
historical expertise andauthority.
Um, so I'm finding myselfreally conflicted about how gay

(51:16):
to sound.
Right?
I'm just gonna like put it thatbluntly.
Um, which is you know, uh isthat gonna undermine my
authority with particularaudiences because they are going
to not see that as hear that asthe voice that has historical
authority.
Um I know when I walk in togive a lecture, I straighten my
voice out.
It's what you do to18-year-olds.

(51:36):
You do it in a reallyunconscious way.
So doing this podcast hasreally forced me to confront
those questions, and I don'tknow what my answer is yet.

Dr Geraldine Fela (51:47):
Um I was very lucky in that I got to be um
kind of one step removed as a asa um kind of expert that came
in and chitty-chatted with Jan,um, which was a really good
format, and I I would I wouldalways prefer to do that.
Um, with and I'm very glad thatthat was the role that that I

(52:07):
had.
Um, because it did allow me aswell to be a historian a little
bit more, I think.
Um so that was very good.

Dr Craig Barker (52:15):
I think in a sense that you've been cast in
that role, if we're thinking ofit as sort of a a traditional
dramatic narrative storytellingformat.

Dr Geraldine Fela (52:23):
Yeah, that's right.
Um so that that was that wasreally good.
Um, and I think partly as well,just but you know, to touch on
Lee's earlier point about thechanging nature of the
podcasting landscape, the ABCand Radio National in particular
has this history of socialhistory there.
Like the people I was workingwith, a lot of them have a

(52:44):
social history background.
Some of them have multiplePhDs, like more than one, which
I'm like that's crazy.
Um, but so that that that kindof you do have um, you know,
there's an appreciation then forthe historian's role that you
know, obviously UTS um historylab has as well, but not all

(53:04):
platforms or production housesdo.
And I think that's reallyhistorians need to understand
that.
It's really important.
Um the the other, but but interms of the kind of the casting
of the the yourself.
So that was very positive.
One um experience I have hadthat I was a bit shocked by was
um on a different podcast that Idid where I found myself cast

(53:28):
as kind of yes, historian, butalso approachable millennial.
And I just it felt verygendered.
Um, like they left some littlejokes I'd made in there that I
kind of didn't expect would makeum the cart um that I thought
really diminished my authorityin in the whole setting.
And I just thought at the time,like, I don't think they would

(53:51):
have done that if I was a man.
Like I think I couldn't haveauthority on my own, so I had to
be approachable.
Um, and that, yeah, that'ssomething that I think we kind
of need to grapple with a bit aswell.

Dr Craig Barker (54:02):
So a question of editorial control to some
degree then, or at leasteditorial input.

Dr Geraldine Fela (54:07):
It was yeah, perhaps.
It was more just I guess itgoes back to Lee's point about
voice.
Like when we enter into thisspace, we we get we get
produced, I think.
And we're academics, so we'relike, we don't get that at all.

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (54:28):
I think uh you know there's a tension
here.
There's a tension between theway uh historians are trained to
think about expertise andauthority and the podcast as a
form that's about intimacy andconnection.
And those two things don'talways match up.
So how we might understandsomeone being uh compelled to

(54:49):
feel intimately connected withyou as a listener might be quite
different to how historiansthink about objectivity and
expertise or not objectivity butexpertise.
Um and those two things theydon't sit cleanly on top of each
other.
Um and so they require somethought about how am I gonna how
how might I do both of those atonce?

(55:10):
Um, which I think is a it's aquestion, you know, it's a
question to think through andand think about.

Dr Craig Barker (55:16):
You've you've alluded to my next question a
little bit, both in yourpresentations and in some of
your answers now, but what didyou both feel that you had to
learn the hard way in theprocess of uh of uh creating a
history-based podcast?

Dr Geraldine Fela (55:36):
Um the hardest thing for me, and and
you mentioned this earlier,Craig, was editorial control.
Um, because if you're anacademic, you're really used to
this thing called academicfreedom.
Um, but it turns out you don'thave that elsewhere.
And you know, it was it it wasquite like the I guess the first
big like moment I had was whensomeone started talking about

(55:59):
both sides of the dispute, and Iwas like, there aren't two.
But the ABC has an editorialpolicy that governs that
organization, and everyone workswithin that.
They have to, it's not you knowthe choice of the journalists.
Um, so that was I found that aconstant source of sleepless
nights.

(56:20):
Um, and you know, ultimatelywhat we said went through legal
and it went through a kind of EdPol's person, and they severely
watered down what we were ableto say about Howard to the point
where I said this is no longeraccurate.

(56:41):
Um, but actually the editorialuh that that was actually about
a piece of writing that was kindof attached to to the podcast.
But that was very, very hard asa historian to to kind of make
to experience that, to see thathappen.
And it was absolutely not aboutthe people who made the
podcast, it was about, you know,another section of the ABC.

(57:03):
Um, but that that was thebiggest lesson for me to learn
was this you had to make adecision, like, is it better
that this goes out in the world,not perfect, not what I want it
to be, or is it better that itdoesn't, you know?
And that was that was a harddecision to make.

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (57:20):
Um well, we're not being balanced.
Um uh in fact, uh the podcastwe're producing is probably
gonna be all about position,right?
So it's gonna have a reallydifferent feel to it, I suspect.
Um, but one of the there's beenlots of things that I've
learned, um, some harder thanothers, but um one of the things

(57:42):
I've I've learned is that whatan oral historian thinks about
as a great interview and apodcast producer thinks about as
a great interview are tworeally different things.
Like really, really differentthings.
And so interviews that I thinkare wonderful and I'm deeply
attached to, it actually takesthe person five minutes to get
to the point, and you just can'thave five minutes of audio of

(58:05):
someone talking to get to it,like that's just not sustainable
in terms of a podcast model.
So there's been some realmoments where interviews that I
think are incredibly powerfulcommunicators of complexity
don't turn out to make goodaudio for a listener.
So figuring that out andrealizing that um, and realizing

(58:26):
that I can hear a voice ofsomeone who I've spent six
months with in my ears, so Ihear their voice and know their
story instantly.
Um, whereas the listeners, Ihave to remember the listen, you
know, learning to listenfreshly to material you know
very well has been reallyinteresting.
But one of the other things umthat's been difficult to learn

(58:47):
or difficult to uh negotiate isthat uh oral historians as a
rule, not as a rule, butgenerally speaking, have a
pretty careful framework inwhich to uh acquit our ethical
obligations to the people weinterview.
And that includes checking backwith them about what you do
with their stories, right?
So people who write history upin in in written form, if

(59:10):
they're using oral histories,will often check back with the
people they've interviewed andsay and show them this is what
I'm this is what I'm doing withyour story.
What do you think?
Are you okay with it?
And we call that sharingauthority that is almost
impossible to do in the podcastproduction process.
And so that's a really assomeone who conducted a set of

(59:34):
interviews on the basis of anoral history ethical framework,
only to discover afterwards thatI was engaging with them in a
very particular kind of intimateway, kind of searching for
cracks, kind of trying to breakthem open in some ways.
Um on the assumption that'spart of my training that it's
okay, I'm gonna check backlater.

(59:54):
And so there's all kinds ofdisclosures that I I now wonder
if I'd been in.
Interviewing as a radioproducer, I wonder if I would
have interviewed them in thesame way.
And I don't know.

Dr Craig Barker (01:00:05):
It it's funny you say that because one of the
questions I was going to ask is,I guess, the line between
journalist and historian in thiscontext, and particularly for
podcasts, you know, with TheGuardian and ABC, so traditional
media outlets as well.
But I mean, do you think yoursubjects respond differently, A,
for a podcast, as opposed to anoral history?

(01:00:27):
And do you think that they'rethinking historical context
rather than I'm just telling agood story?

Dr Geraldine Fela (01:00:35):
It's a really good question.
I think it depends a little bitwho you're talking to.
And the other thing that'simportant there is, I think
setting matters.
Like the moment you bringsomeone into the ABC studio,
it's not an oral historyanymore.
It's an interview, it's tape,it's an interview for a program.
So that that's important, Ithink.
Um I like on the ethicalquestion, it's something I kind

(01:01:00):
of struggled with a little bitas well.
Um, I kind of came to theposition that I don't like
you're not share, there's nosharing of authority with John
Howard.
You know, like he he's got he'sgot enough.
Um, but also he like he issaying exactly what he is

(01:01:21):
saying.
He is like he he's he's not hehe is approaching that interview
very, very consciously, and Idon't need to go back to John
Henry.

Dr Craig Barker (01:01:31):
He's a had a lot more media training than the
average person that's beinginterviewed today.

Dr Geraldine Fela (01:01:35):
Exactly, exactly.
So I think for me, I kind ofcame to a position of like with
my that there are someinterviews that I did in that
time that I'll use in my furtherwork, and I'll use those ones
with the politicians as well.
I'll share authority withMichelle, but I won't be going
back to John Howard.
Um, and that I think issomething we kind of have to um,

(01:01:58):
you know, in some ways we haveto make it up a little bit
because it's new.
Um, yeah, I don't know if thatanswers your question.
It does, it does.

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (01:02:05):
No, thank you.
I just I think you know, uh away to understand this is that
uh people who work in a kind ofradio broadcast landscape have
an idea of being on the record,right?
And if you say to someone thisis on the record, ethical
obligations complete.
Right?
On the record done.
I don't have to, I don't haveto worry.
You've you've consented towhatever's gonna happen to this

(01:02:27):
because it's on the record.
An oral history interview doesnot work that way.
Um they are if they're goingwell, they're very intimate,
relational, um, and and theydevelop in in quite beautiful
and lovely ways.
Um uh it's pretty hard toconsent to them beforehand
because you don't know what'sgonna happen.

(01:02:48):
Like it's impossible I thinkit's impossible to consent to a
oral history interview becauseyou don't know what's gonna
happen.
Um so it's it's issues ofconsent and ethics I think are
really complex.

Dr Craig Barker (01:02:58):
Do you think podcasts democratize history?
Coming back to an earliercomment.

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (01:03:09):
Okay, okay.
Um such an annoying answer.
Um I think we fantasize thatpodcasts are a way for academic

(01:03:30):
historians to contribute topublic conversations.
We kind of imagine a public,right?
And we imagine a public in akind of liberal democratic way.
So we think, oh, this is ademocratizing project.
I'm coming, I'm actuallycontributing to our democratic
health in that kind of way.
We think it, you know, we allprobably think that history is
an important part of thoseconversations.
I am quite unconvinced thatpodcasts do that.

(01:03:55):
I don't think that means theydon't have value, right?
But they're a narrow cast form.
They're a subscriber form.
They're not actually about thepublic, they're about particular
audiences, particular groups ofpeople.
Um, and we communicate to them.
And so it's not actually a it'snot a collective public in the

(01:04:16):
way that we might want orfantasize it to be.
Yeah.

Dr Geraldine Fela (01:04:20):
I think I think that's true.
And I think in some ways we'velike thinking about something
like um social history at RadioNational, actually, there's less
now.
There's less being broadcast tothe public um because they the
ABC has sliced and diced thatunit for decades and decades.
So, and and pushed increasinglyin the direction of, you know,

(01:04:43):
much less historical content,even if it's labeled as
historical.
Um, so you know, that's a bitdepressing, but I think it's
true.
Um I think the other element ofit of it is that like Lee and I
were talking about this a littlebit um the last few days.
Like I think there's this ideathat if something happens
outside of a university, it'sdemocratizing.

(01:05:06):
Um, or like I'd it's very Ifind it very weird.
Um, because I my view is like,let's bring more things into the
university, actually.
Like let's have like what whydo we think that it's better if
it's not being done byhistorians or if anyone can do
it?
Like maybe it would be better.
I mean, it'd be better if therewere more historians, full stop

(01:05:27):
in my opinion.
I'm sure many people share thatview in this room.
But um, like I I guess what I'mwhat am I trying to get at?
Sometimes I think that argumentaround democratizing history or
whatever it, you know, the thekind of flavor of it is, is
actually a diminishing ofexpertise and an argument around

(01:05:48):
an argument that diminishes theimportance of expertise.
And I just wonder if it, yeah,yeah, I I I question that, I
suppose.
I'm not sure it's great forhistory if anyone can get on a
mic and talk about what theythink about the French
Revolution.
I'm not sure that'sdemocratizing history.
Democratizing history is makingsure more people know more
about the French Revolution, butI don't think the mic does that

(01:06:12):
necessarily.

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (01:06:13):
And there is actually a reason to be
optimistic, right?
I'm gonna end, I'm gonna putsomething optimistic here, which
is if you look at the top 20list of podcasts and history
podcasts, they are generallyspeaking people with expertise.
There is appetite forexpertise.
So the idea that people don'twant to consume good podcasts
from people with expertise um isa bit bunk.

(01:06:34):
And David Runciman, who youknow does past, present, future,
he basically gives his Oxfordlecture.
He just basically gives alecture as a podcast and he
says, I can't believe it.
I just give my lectures andpeople want to listen.
He says it in a posh Britishaccent.
Um I can't believe it.
Um uh so you know there's allkinds of things to talk about

(01:06:55):
studios and how those getdistributed, and and and there's
some things to think aboutthere.
But those popular podcastsoften, some of them have
expertise at their center, someof them don't.
Some of them are mediapersonalities pretending to have
expertise, but some of them do,and and I think we should um be

(01:07:17):
excited by that too.

Dr Craig Barker (01:07:20):
I'm conscious we're running out of time, but I
would like to invite one or twoquestions from the floor if
anybody would like to askanything.
Here we go.
First up.

Audience Question 1 (01:07:30):
Thanks both so much.
Can can you say a little bitmore about the target audience?
Do we know who these peopleare?
And can you say a bit moreabout that?
Because that frames what youdo, right?
And what's saleable.

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (01:07:47):
Okay.
Um uh I think podcasts areoften produced with an audience
in mind.
So there's an imaginedlistener, right?
And that imagined listener isusually a pretty blunt marketing
term about identity, age,gender.
Like, you know, it's a 20 to 35year old man.

(01:08:08):
You know, like actually a lotof the way that um the
production landscape aroundpodcasts uses those kinds of
ideas to think about itslistener.
Um as far as actual stats onwho is listening to history
podcasts go, I actually don'tknow.
Yeah, I actually don't know.

Dr Geraldine Fela (01:08:27):
Yeah, I don't we we got the breakdown for the
waterfront, but we don't havethat much information about
where the listeners come from.
Um what was interesting, soJan, who people know who Jan
Fran is, kind of comedian,journalist, very, very like
amazing.

(01:08:47):
Um, she did a whole bunch ofpromos on her social media about
it.
And I and we got a big boostfrom that.
And that really excited mebecause I think we genuinely got
new listeners with that.
Um and people who wouldn'tusually have listened to
something about the waterfrontdispute.
So that that was very exciting.

(01:09:08):
Um, but beyond that, it's likevery it's very imagined, like
they said, I think the the kindof the listenership.

Dr Craig Barker (01:09:16):
All right.
Any last question from thefloor?
Thank you.

Audience Question 2 (01:09:23):
Hi, um, it's a little bit specific.
Um, and it's going back to theum turning an oral history
interview into, you know, grabsor quotes for the podcast.
Um, did you find yourself askedor doing the oral histories in
such a way to elicit thatparticular quote in that

(01:09:44):
particular way?

Dr Geraldine Fela (01:09:45):
Yeah, yeah, I did.
Um and I and in fact I was kindof trained to by my colleagues
at the ABC because we had we hadto for for the the program.
Um and it's a totally differentway of interviewing.
In fact, most of my oralhistories, I'd done 20.
I think we used a 10-secondgrab from one in the entire
series.
Like they were not fit forpurpose.

(01:10:06):
Um, so yeah, it was it's it's awhole it was a completely new
style.
Looking for asking people torephrase, ask asking people to
say it again, asking people tonot use pronouns, to use the
name, like all of that stuffthat the radio people in the
room will be familiar with thattotally changes the dynamic of
the interview.

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (01:10:27):
Not fit for purpose.
But were, you know, um, andalso though that style of
interviewing, it might producebetter audio, but it produces
worse history.
Right.
So the historical insight thatyou get from those interviews
because you're interrupting andyou're asking people, you're not
letting people wander off, youknow, and you're not circling

(01:10:48):
back to an idea they raised 40minutes ago and just coming at
it again because you thinkthere's something else in it,
you know, which is what often anoral history interview is you
coming back to something andkind of just sort of sitting
with them, going, Oh, there'ssomething here.
And I think you want to say it,let's um and uh for a bit.
Um that's not great.
That's not great radio orpodcasting content, or it can

(01:11:10):
be, but it often isn't.
So um, I did a set of oralhistory interviews and then I
did a set of second interviews,and the second interviews were
much, I hope.
I'll let my producers tell methat, but they were they they
felt really different.

Dr Craig Barker (01:11:23):
Well, look, I think we're at the point of the
evening where we can do someadverts.
So to listen, so conspiracy isavailable on ABC Radio
National's website for us tolisten.
If you can find it.

Dr Geraldine Fela (01:11:35):
Um, I would recommend actually getting it
through Spotify.
This is terrible.
Don't tell anyone at the ABC Isaid this Spotify or or Apple,
because the listen app is veryhard to find and to navigate.
Sorry, the ABC.

Dr Craig Barker (01:11:52):
And then Lee, what's the timeline for your
podcast?

A/Prof Leigh Boucher (01:11:55):
We are released as part of History Lab
in about November this year.
And I think we're going to makeit.
Um, I'm pretty sure.
So go and subscribe to HistoryLab.
It's a great series.
So there's lots of content foryou to listen to between now and
then.
And by about November, you'llbe ready to listen to ours.

Dr Craig Barker (01:12:12):
Yes, and well done to the History Lab team.
Some some fantastic, fantasticcontent.
Well, can I ask you all to joinme in thanking Geraldine and
Lee?
Thank you for sharing yourinsights this evening.
It's been fascinating.
I've learned a lot, and um, andit's it's I think all some

(01:12:35):
amazing ideas of of just whatpodcasting can do.
If anyone would like tocontinue the conversation, we're
gonna microphone works, we'regonna head over to the Forest
Lodge pub if anyone would liketo have a drink and sort of
continue the conversation.
So you're almost welcome tojoin us.
Um, on behalf of the museum, onbehalf of the uh Vere Gordon

(01:12:55):
Childe Centre, and on behalf ofthe History Council of New South
Wales, uh, thank you very muchfor joining us this evening.
Um, the uh uh there'll beannouncements about the July
History Now series, but uhspoilers, Jonathan Dalymore,
who's in the room tonight, andTimothy Allen from uh the
University of Sydney will bespeaking on the 29th of July

(01:13:20):
about history teaching and thenext generation of historians.
And I'm also going to squeezein, I haven't told the History
Council people this yet, but I'mgonna squeeze in one about
cultural heritage destruction.
Uh so there'll be announcementsabout both of those events on
both the History Council websiteand the Chau Chak Wing Museum
website very, very soon.
Thank you very much, everyone.
Thank you, Lee.

(01:13:41):
Thank you, Geraldine.

Catherine Shirley (01:13:43):
Thank you for joining us for this podcast.
If you'd like to hear more,subscribe to our series via your
favorite streaming platform.
And join us for our nextHistory Now episode, Cultural
Heritage in Danger, currentcrises and practical solutions.
For a full list of HistoryCouncil cultural partners, along
with a list of other podcastsproduced by us, please visit our

(01:14:06):
website HistoryCouncilnsw.org.au forward slash
podcasts.
I'm Catherine Shirley.
Thank you.