OUR RATING:
An Exercise in Repeating Ourselves
American History Tellers is hosted by Lindsay Graham (definitely not the American senator) and it takes listeners on a journey through America’s greatest hits, and by greatest hits, I mean the same collection of bad decisions, power grabs, and spectacular failures that we’ve been perfecting for centuries.
The podcast makes its way through everything from the Revolutionary War to Watergate, with each episode serving as a delightful reminder that humans are essentially goldfish with opposable thumbs. Graham presents these historical events with the kind of enthusiasm typically reserved for people who believe this time will be different. Spoiler alert: it never is.
Whether it’s political corruption, economic bubbles, or good old-fashioned mob mentality, American History Tellers recounts the same menu of human folly that we’ve been ordering since 1776, just with different names on the receipts.
There’s many things to like about this show, one of which is how it presents each historical period as if it were a unique, unprecedented time of crisis and change. Oh, political polarization tearing the country apart? Revolutionary! Economic inequality reaching dangerous levels? How novel! Foreign interference in elections? What an original concept! Graham walks listeners through these events with the same tone you’d use to explain quantum physics to a toddler, as if somehow this time the audience will actually learn something from the past instead of just nodding along before immediately forgetting everything.
The series format is genius in its futility: each multi-part story arc essentially boils down to “people did dumb things for predictable reasons, everyone acted shocked, nothing fundamentally changed.” It’s like a historical Groundhog Day, except Bill Murray has been replaced by an entire nation that keeps hitting the snooze button on wisdom. The Boston Tea Party leads to revolution, which leads to the Civil War, which leads to Reconstruction, which leads to Jim Crow, which leads to the Civil Rights Movement, which leads to… well, you get the picture. Or rather, you don’t, because that would require learning from it.
Graham’s storytelling approach treats each historical moment as an isolated incident rather than part of humanity’s ongoing commitment to spectacular pattern recognition failure. The podcast carefully explains the context and consequences of each event, as if context has ever stopped anyone from making the same mistakes their great-great-grandparents made.
Like many other history podcasts, American History Tellers seems to have an implicit faith in the transformative power of historical knowledge. Each episode seems to whisper, “If only people knew about this, they’d never let it happen again!” It’s adorable, really, like watching someone explain fire safety to a pyromaniac. The podcast dutifully chronicles America’s greatest hits of hubris, corruption, and willful ignorance while maintaining the touching belief that education can somehow overcome humanity’s apparently genetic predisposition to repeat every mistake in the history books.
What American History Tellers ultimately proves is that history isn’t cyclical, it’s a broken record, and we’re all just dancing to the same scratched song over and over again. It’s the perfect listening experience for anyone who enjoys learning about the past while simultaneously living through its inevitable repetition. Are we having fun yet America?!?
After all, those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it, and those who do study history are doomed to watch everyone else repeat it anyway. At least American History Tellers makes the whole tragic comedy entertaining enough to binge-listen while Rome burns for the umpteenth time.
Where to listen to American History Tellers
Episodes.fm | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro
Discover the best episodes of American History Tellers