This is a transcript of a âlive showâ episode of the Stuff You Missed In History Class podcast. Iâve only transcribed the live show part of the podcast, not the linking sections (other than the intro). Iâm also really bad at distinguishing voices, so Iâve had to mostly guess who is speaking based on what they said - this wasnât always possible, and I may have mixed people up even so. The hosts of the podcast sometimes appear with their own initials and sometimes as âMIHâ. I apologise in advance for any mistakes.
HF: Hello and welcome to the podcast. Iâm Holly Fry
TBW: And Iâm Tracy B. Wilson. Youâll hear that again in a minute, because we recorded this while in Salt Lake City, at Salt Lake City Comicon, and we did a couple of live shows.
HF: Yup.
TBW: One of those live shows was a panel where we talked to authors who incorporate history into their fiction writing. We were really, really lucky to be at a convention that had just some amazing authors on hand who were willing to share their process with us. This conversation covers everything from their research process to diversity in history to being kind of precious about facts. I wanna thank you, Holly, for doing 99% of the leg-work on this panel. Holly assembled a great panel. Some of them - one of them - will be a familiar voice to listeners, and then also a really interesting spectrum of how people incorporate history into their writing. So you will get [?] from a sort of wide range of flavours of historical fiction.
HF: Yeah, and I should really give some of the credit on putting together that panel to Ryan Call, who is one of the amazing people that runs SLCC - I kinda put out a yell to him and said âhey, we wanna do this panelâ, and he gave suggestions on who might be good to talk to, so thank you, thank you Ryan. Thank you SLCC - we had a wonderful time there, but weâre gonna hop right into our discussion and then you, too, can benefit from hearing about some of the interesting thoughts that these authors had to share with us.
TBW: Hello and welcome to the podcast. Iâm Tracy B. Wilson
HF: And Iâm Holly Fry.
TBW: We have something cool today, which is that weâre gonna talk to some actual authors about historical fiction.
HF: Yeah, we often get asked by listeners like if we would cover, like, a historical fiction book, and since thatâs not really a part of the purview of the podcast as it exists, we canât really do it as a regular episode, but for special events - like a live event like this - we absolutely can!
TBW: Yeah, and also, instead of talking about an individual book and its historical influence, weâll be talking about lots of writers and lots of books.
HF: Yeah, we thought weâd take advantage of the fact that we are at a place where we have several writers
TBW: Yes
HF: And writers of historical fiction, so we thought âwhat better way to explore that topic than to talk with them about how they actually create this fiction that people like you love, because it blends sort of the wonders of imagination with actual historical fact?â
TBW: So, first of all, weâre gonna have each of our wonderful panellists introduce themselves, starting with this gentleman to my left, who is not a stranger to the Stuff You Missed In History Class audience.
BY: My name is Brian Young, and Iâm the author of A Childrenâs Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination, which is what I was on for before. But in the historical fiction realm, my last book was called The Aeronaut and it was sort of a steampunk WWI novel, and additionally I write for starwars.com and Star Wars Insider and a lot for Star Wars and really like researching history.
EBW: My name is E. B. Wheeler. Iâm the author of The Haunting of Springer Hall, which you might have guessed by the title is not completely historically accurate, but also Born To Treason which is a lot more historical and is based on actual events, and No Peace With The Dawn, which is coming out in November.
BM: So my nameâs Brian McClellan. I did give a caveat when we first talked about doing this panel that I write epic fantasy - I donât actually write historical books, but Iâm very heavily influenced by history but then I add magic and a secondary world to it. But my books are the Powder Mage trilogy.
MIH: We were actually really excited to have that breadth of - a range from fantasy that is sort of historically flavoured to, all the way to the other end of the spectrum to your books. So we are gonna begin with a question that is open to anyone on the panel. I have become a big fan of Kerry Greenwoodâs Miss Fisherâs murder mystery books. I like them quite a lot, and I noticed after reading several, which I am reading in order, that she started to place notes, along the lines of the one I am about to read, at the end of each book. This says, âThis is a work of fiction. I have researched it as carefully as I could. There are undoubtedly some small errors of fact and timing, and one big anachronism, which is that I unilaterally moved the Flower Parade from 1929 to 1928. Please forgive me, and do not feel moved to correct me. Anyone else is welcome to email meâ, and then she gives her email address. So, I wondered if all these other writers of historical fiction, whether youâve had similar need to correct things that are historical parts of books that are actually fiction.
BM: So I toyed around with historical fiction at college quite a lot. I really enjoyed it because I love history, and this is the exact reason I donât write historical fiction. I am a âWikipedia writerâ, and I get a lot of eye-rolls from other authors when I say this, because I write in a fantastical world and I do that so thatâs itâs not this world. If I need to research something, itâs usually going to be something like, you know, the muzzle velocity of a, y'know, from a lock rifle, y'know, stuff like that. Itâs going to be very specific and easy to find. I donât do a ton of digging and try to be specific to a particular year that I am trying to copy. I try very much to capture the, kind of the feel of an era. I want something to be, y'know, âNapoleonicâ but without Napoleon and our own history, y'know, muddling it all up. I had a huge fear when I started my books that I would get a lot of that, and it hasnât actually been a big problem. Iâve had some - Iâve had one or two history buffs whoâve said, y'know, âoh, youâre doing this wrong with, y'know, like, y'know your infantary formationsâ, y'know, stuff like that but I, most of my feedback has been very positive.
EBW: I try to be as precise, as accurate as I can be with my historical fiction, because it is historical fiction and thereâs always gonna be someone out there that knows a little bit more than you do about it, so you just, you have to be as careful as you can and do as much research as you can. We did have, in No Peace With The Dawn I have a coauthor in that book and we do have a few things that we knowingly put in there that werenât completely accurate and one of them was, there were a total of three African-American women out of all the people that the US sent overseas to set WWI there were three African-American women who went overseas, that was it. That was the only ones that were allowed to go, and they all went with the YMCA, and I thought that their story was really interesting and I really wanted to include like a mention or a cameo of them, but they got there a little bit after, they go to Paris a little bit after my character left and I just, I had to fudge it a little bit and have them be there - at least one of them be there - a little bit early to she could meet them and have an interaction with them because I just really wanted to get their story in there a little bit, so I, but I do have a note at the end that I say, âyes, we know that this isnât right, they were a little bit later that they got thereâ but sometimes when you just really wanna get a mention of something in there, kind of like moving the parade back by a year, itâs just the temptationâs a little too much to resist.
MIH: Yeah, reminds me of a game that I play a lot of, that is called The Long Dark, and it begin with (B?: I love that game) this caveat that itâs just, âwe are aware that wolves donât normally attack peopleâ, and you can sort of hear that there was some critique with that feedback when they decided to put it in there.
B?: I think, from my perspective, Kurt Vonnegut once wrote a book that was interspersed with recipes for food because he wanted to give a flavour of what the book kind of felt like as you moved through it and he put a note in there about how none of the recipes should be taken as literally - you shouldnât take his book and go and do the recipes, because they werenât accurate, and then anyone worth anything would have the original recipes and cookbooks on their shelves anyway, and I think that thatâs sort of the flavour that historical fiction needs to take - in my opinion - because what youâre trying to do is contextualise and give a flavour of what that history was like and as a reader you probably donât want to say, y'know, that fiction part means a lot and you donât want to say âno, this wasnât accurate, y'know, there needed to be more eggs in that recipeâ, y'know.
MIH: I like that Kurt Vonnegut could always find a way to kind of like âurgh, you people, with thisâ, itâs like âI know the recipes arenât right, you should know betterâ, he puts it back on the reader, which I love. The next question is for Emily specifically. You have a pretty significant history scholarship background. You are not like a layman in this world. Do you ever find it difficult to diverge from the historical record as youâre creating fiction?
EBW: Yes, it kill me! Itâs so painful. So I have a Masters degree in history and I also have a MOA in Historic Cultural Landscapes, so I have a lot of interest in that and I teach history at Utah State University and so I like things to be accurate and itâs really, it is painful and itâs hard to step away from that even when sometimes we just donât know things, or some things it doesnât matter how much research you do youâre never gonna get that detail or find that information and I will research it forever until Iâm really, really sure that that detail isnât out there, and then I have to make it up and itâs scary to do that because again, there may be that one person out there somewhere that knows it and I donât and theyâre gonna come back and say youâre an idiot because you didnât know this and it just - it is, itâs painful to change things or to make them up because - especially when youâve done so much research to have it accurate and then have something in there that you know isnât.
MIH: That actually leads really well into the next question, which is for anyone on the panel that wants to answer, and I think you probably would each have very different answers: what is your research process like?
BM: Like I said, Iâm a Wikipedia researcher, y'know, I write very quickly, I write in spurts. Iâll write an entire novel in just a few months after not writing for six months because Iâm just letting it percolate in my head and so, to me, a lot of the times if I have to stop and go over and, like, look through things, it derails my process completely, and so Iâm very much about the pacing and the characters and the plot and I just try to kind of pound through it. And my wifeâs my first beta reader on everything, and she gives me so much crap about it because she loves doing research and she loves looking at all that stuff. So oftentimes, Iâll be working on something, Iâll be like, âhoney, would you look this up for me real quick?â âcause I donât wanna stop and do it and Iâll go back and change it later. So, as limited as possible, but again, Iâm working in a second world, and Iâm only going for flavour. Y'know, Iâm aiming for something thatâs like, more like a TV show would be in terms of historical accuracy, rather than being super accurate.
EBW: I tend to start, I find an idea that I like, something that seems really cool, maybe a story that other people havenât heard about, and I think, oh this is really awesome, I have to tell this story, and then I go and do the background research. So I find secondary sources, y'know, books that just talk about what life was like in this time period, and I try to read the primary sources, I try to read things that were written in that time period. If I can find journals and letters and things like that, I get really, really in-depth and Iâm the opposite of⌠Wikipedia isnât all bad, but for me it would definitely be just the very base starting point, so, going back to those original sources, trying to find out, and then as Iâm writing, Iâll run into things, y'know, Iâll talk about somebodyâs shoes and, oh, do they have shoelaces or buttons, how do their shoes go on. I need to find that out. Y'know, what if their, if theyâre celebrating a holiday, how do they celebrate it, and go back and look for those little details as Iâm writing. Sometimes I do write ahead and then go back and change it later and and check on it later, but if I do the research ahead of time, then itâs in my head enough that I can write quickly, because I do like writing quickly, and then go back and fix the small things later.
BY: I think for me, I like to kinda research as Iâm going, in that Iâll do a lot research to put the story together, read history books. One of the things I really love doing is, the two books that Iâve written that are historical fiction or alternate history fiction, theyâre eras in which we can read newspapers from that era and we can, y'know, you read how people were writing, how people were quoted. The ads in those newspapers were suprisingly helpful because, y'know, I would have never thought that âtooth powderâ was a thing, rather than toothpaste, or litte details like that. When I was working on WWI stuff, I would go to the library and have my computer out and Iâd be working, but Iâd just have, Iâd pull out all the old big picture books with things, and just flip through the pages as I was going, and it was me trying to replicate sort of what Martin Scorcese says he does in the editing room. So on the editing room, Martin Scorcese has a monitor on at all times with like [Turner?] classic movies on it, and itâs just because heâs, every one in a while if heâs stuck, heâll glance down and maybe something, whatever is randomly curated on the TV there, might help him get to that next thing. So thatâs me flipping pages on three or four history books as Iâm working through scenes and through details, and Iâve found so many great details that I was able to weave into the story that way as it was coming together naturally.
BM: Y'know, I should mention that, like, I think for a lot authors - I know epic fantasy that are very much like this for me - that the inspiration that comes from reading history is amazing. And I donât know if it qualifies as âresearchâ, because Iâm not looking for specific details, but Iâm looking for something thatâs cool, thatâs a âwow factorâ from history that maybe people donât know about, or maybe thatâs familiar enough to people that itâs a good way to transport them into another world. My first book: very heavily inspired by the French revolution; my second book: very heavily inspired by Xenophonâs Anabasis. Y'know, I try to pluck things that are really cool and, y'know, twist them and use them in my own way.
BY: Thatâs exactly why I love listening to this podcast, to be honest, because it, no itâs, Iâm serious. And this is why I tell writers (MIH: nice job, Bryan, itâs really good), no, every time I talk to writers (MIH: push it while youâre on it, thatâs spectacular) every time I talk to writers at conventions I tell them that itâs the sort of thing, whether theyâre listening to this one specifically or just something like this in general (but there isnât one as good as this one), that you guys are curating content, you guys are curating stories that I wouldnât necessarily seek out, in any way, so Iâm getting just one story after another that maybe they donât connect, but theyâre making me think about things, and soaking in those cool things. There are so many episodes that I just save and go back to later. The fanstasy book that I worked on, the werewolf, the French werewolf episodes you guys did, I listened to those probably four or five times while I was writing that book.
BM: I know myself and another epic fantasy author, Brent Weeks, are both huge fans of Hardcore History, and listen to that religiously, and thatâs a great one for me for just sitting there and listening about that emotion of history, and trying to pluck something from it.
MIH: I also have it on good authority that history podcasts are great tools when youâre running a D&D campaign - figure out whatâs happening to your players.
MIH: The next question that I have, Iâm gonna start with Brian, but if other folks have ideas, I would also like to hear from the rest of the panel, too. In the last few years, there seem to be more and more books that come out and somebody will raise the question of âthe characters in this book are not very diverseâ, and - often enough for it to be a pattern, the response is like âwell, that was historyâ. So I wanted to see what your thoughts were on that. Brian?
BM: I think that thatâs kind of being a lazy writer, to be honest. I think when you look at thing like, maybe, the way women are treated on Game of Thrones, per se, thatâs - itâs historical in one way, that he was basing it off of one perspective of medieval Europe, but itâs his own universe, so thereâs nothing that says that the culture as it exists in that sexist form needs to exist in that same way in his universe. Y'know, you can find ways to work around that and stand behind that âfiction shieldâ and come up with ways to put that together. I donât think thatâs necessarily where - or a way to acknowledge it. Y'know, a book I worked on - that isnât out yet, or anything, itâs about film makers in the 1910s, running from Edisonâs âpatent menâ, who were thugs that were hired by Edison to shoot up cameras and make sure that nobody made films unless they were paying him what was essentially protection money - and it was a very male-dominated industry, it was a very male-dominated era, but finding ways to incorporate female characters in more contemporary settings, like I said you just need to give the flavour of that history, you donât have to⌠I donât wanna say that itâs masking what that history was, but itâs including people into what it might have been, and finding ways to do that that are creative.
EBW: Yeah, I agree that itâs lazy writing to say, well, âeverybody was whiteâ, âeverybody was straightâ, âeverybody was maleâ - I mean, obviously that oneâs not true, but the other ones arenât true, either - the other ones arenât true, either. As I was⌠itâs just that historyâs been white-washed, and we donât look - even European history, there were minority groups throughout: racial minorities and religious minorities and sexual orientation minorities - they were all there throughout history. They were part of the historical landscape. As I was researching for Born To Treason - itâs a Welsh renaissance setting - and as I was looking through sources for that, I found a book called Jews And Muslims In Medieval Wales, and I was like âwell, thereâs another book Iâm gonna have to write, because thatâs awesomeâ. And you donât think about that, you donât think that - but they were there, we just - sometimes you have to look for them. And so even if youâre writing - definitely if youâve got a fantasy setting, you can play with that, you can include people of different, of diverse groups. But even if youâre doing just straight historical fiction and itâs very accurate, itâs based on research, those minorities were still there, they were just kind of being hushed up, and they werenât necessarily getting a lot of attention from contemporary writers or sometimes even from historians today - weâre still sort of digging them up. So it is out there, and you can include it, and thereâs not really a good reason not to, if youâre creating a community thatâs in a historical setting.
BY: Itâs a really interesting thing where you can find that many of these communities had their own sources of outlet where you could read about what they were doing. Iâve been researching for a long time a story about the Japanese internment in WWII, and Iâd read all of the sort of contemporary accounts and things, but it wasnât until I - I didnât feel like I had a full picture until the daily newsletters they were printing on the inside themselves, and hearing how they were describing that in their own words that I realised that the history we knew was just sort of the version that, y'know, itâs true - historyâs written by the winners, and the Japanese internment is no different, and seeing how they wrote about it in their own words was incredibly enlightening.
MIH: Iâm mostly gonna take a moment to pitch the People of Color in European Art History tumblr. Itâs great! (MIH2: Itâs so good.) Number one, for constant examples all over art history of âhey, it was not all white people!â, but then number two for the occasional indignant response to someone being terrible. (MIH2: Yeah, itâs spectacular. The next question is for everybody. Because you all love history, and you love writing fiction, I know Emily talked about worrying that somebody else might know a thing out there that she didnât happen to unearth, but I wondered just - for any of you, within yourselves - how often do you find yourselves battling going the route of fiction in a moment versus wanting to stay true to a piece of history that you might be in love with?)
BM: I mean, for me, really it is about that flavour. I havenât written anything that was so specifically tied or married to that history - it was always in service to the story. Especially with that story about the filmmakers kind of battling Edison, y'know, there are very few accounts, and itâs weird how many different sources you have to piece together to kind of put together a picture of what that would look like anyway, so that finding the exact history - like, enough of the background and the setting - that was what was important for me to stay true to, rather than any of the specific details. But that doesnât mean some of it - most of it happens in Sacramento - and that doesnât mean that I wasnât looking up, like, maps and which streets the street car lines ran on and what colours the street cars were and, y'know, where the hotels were in relation to where theyâd be staying and where their office would be, things like that.
MIH: It almost sounds like for every time you take creative license, you build up the actual factual stuff (BM: yeah!) on the other end of it.
EBW: Iâve found that as well, that we - so, No Peace With The Dawn, the WWI novel - we wanted to, itâs actually about Utahns in WWI and what happend to Utah in WWI, and so we thought âwell, we both teach at Utah State Universityâ weâre up in Cash Valley up in northern Utah, and the Shoshone were the Native Americans that were there in that area before - we thought that it would be interesting to include them, because they have a lot of history in the area, but itâs one of those, itâs kind of been white-washed, and so we thought this might be tricky to like, âhow are we going to work them in?â. And it turned out there was so much information, like the first code talkers werenât the Navajo in WWII, they were the Choctaw in WWI, and we were able to work in some details about that, and so it doesnât often, actually - you might be worried that youâre maybe gonna step away, but as you do that research, a lot of time you find these really cool connections back to the original story that it just fits really well and it just builds the story up more.
BM: Y'know, I actually, I have a terrible memory. Itâs one of the reason I donât actually discuss history with other people very much, because theyâll keep throwing fact at me, and Iâll be like, âyeah, that sounds familiarâ. But I have this terrible memory and so Iâll forget things all the time, but Iâll - things will leak into my writing, and I mentioned before that my second book was heavily inspired by the Anabasis, and I didnât realise that until after it was out, because I love the Anabasis - in Latin as a kid we talked about it a lot, and the teacher would give us translations and stuff to read, and then I remember in college being obsessed with it, loving it and wanting to do something interesting with it. And then several years passed, and I hadnât thought about it for a while, and I had my first book out and then the second book I worked on and finished and put that out, and looking back at it when I started to do publicity for that book I went, âoh my gosh, an army in enemy territory trying to make their way home: I wrote something thatâs like the Anabasis without even realising itâ. And so, like, I think thatâs part of being an author - and, y'know, even that doesnât necessarily write historical fiction - and somebody that loves history, is that itâs going to leak into there a lot, because youâre getting inpired by other stories, and those stories donât have to necessarily be fiction
MIH: My next question is actually for you, and itâs along those same lines. Youâve talked a couple of times about how you donât really write historical fiction - itâs more of a historically-inspired fantasy. Where do you feel like that line is in your process?
BM: The line, I mean, I try not steal directly, because, y'know, some people might notice, but, so, like I said, I have a terrible memory so Iâm forgetting the guyâs book - the name of the book or the name of the author - but I read this amazing book, it was like something like 5 Ways We Got To Now [transcriber note: I think heâs referring to How We Got To Now: Six Innovations That Made The Modern World by Steven Johnson] or something like that - it was on Jon Stewart a few years ago, thatâs where I got it from, but one of the things he talked about was cold - the concept of âcoldâ, historically - and he talked about this character, this guy, this real person who basically brought ice to North America and started selling ice for the first time, and that became a big revolutionary thing. And my next book has a character who is the âice baronâ, and I stole that one directly. The characterâs completely different from the real historical person, but the way they got to pow⌠their wealth and the way things interact in that world is extremely similar, and I felt like I could take that one because it was quite obscure but interesting and kinda cool and had that, y'know that realism to it because itâs real!
[audience]: I felt like we couldnât talk about historical fiction without bringing up the musical Hamilton, and I just sort of, I dunno, Iâve sort of gone into the historical⌠and thereâs stuff thatâs inaccurate about it, but, I dunno, it plays with time and mixed the timeline around a bit, but, like to sort of move the story forward, to have a better flow of the story, so⌠I donât really know what Iâm asking, sort of - what are your thoughts?
TBW: I had on a Hamilton shirt earlier today (HF: she did!). It was the one from where Lin-Manuel Miranda was raising money and if you gave some money, maybe you would win tickets to his last performance, which I did not. Who on the panel likes Hamilton?
B?: I havenât been exposed much to it (other B?: yeah).
HF: I havenât either. This is where I make that blanket statement that gets booed: Iâm not a big fan of musicals. (TBW: Holly doesnât like singing!) I donât. Itâs not that I donât like music, itâs that I donât like watching people sing, because you can see inside their mouths and itâs icky. And when they emote, they tend to make faces that are âprivate timeâ faces, and I donât - Iâm not comfortable with it at all. So I have not partaken of the Hamilton juice yet.
BY: I think what you see with Hamilton, and any historical fiction, is - Alfred Hitchcock said that âfiction is life with the dull bits cut outâ - and so every choice that someone is making when theyâre adapting history into a fictional story, theyâre making those sacrifices and changes to tell a better story, to get you to, as a story-teller, to try to get you to emote or feel for things, or have empathy this way or make you think about things in this way. And so history isnât like that, history is much more objective (depending on the source) and historical fiction isnât that. So I think thatâs where I think itâs great that we have stuff like Hamilton, and hopefully it takes people the next step to actually learn, like, âwell what did they ignore?â, âwhat didnât fit into that story?â, âwhat didnât fit into that narritive?â
BM: The entertainment, or âwow-factorâ is a balance I think all writers are trying to reach because youâre, yeah, you, sometimes you look at something and say âI need to fudge this, but itâs gonna be so cool that nobody cares!â So sometimes you can make things better by doing that, and sometimes you have to go the opposite direction. Sometimes you say ây'know what, this could be cool, but Iâm going to be able to pull it off in a way that makes it satisfyingâ. And, y'know, obviously with something like Hamilton, fudging works.
EBW: And I think itâs good to remember, anytime youâre looking at any kind of history - including your great big published history textbooks and things like that - someone is telling you a story. Someone is selling you a story. They want you to believe that history was the way they said it was. And itâs a little almost creepy to think about, that, like, itâs history, it happened, right? Itâs just the stuff that happened. But itâs always being told as a story and itâs always being retold, and thatâs why historians have jobs, is because weâre re-telling history over and over again and understand⌠and sometimes itâs things like uncovering the Jews and Muslims who lived in medieval Wales, and nobodyâs written about them before, and sometimes itâs just new takes on things, tâs new information. But someoneâs always twi⌠someoneâs always telling you that story, and their own biases are in, and historians are as biased, if not more so as everybody else is. And so, yeah, you look at something like Hamilton - people go in there, I think, knowing that itâs not 100% accurate - I mean, we donât even know if Alexander Hamilton had a great singing voice, so - thereâs an understanding, I think, when you go into fiction. And thereâs different levels of fiction. If itâs a musical, weâre gonna expect things to be condensed and changed. If youâre reading historical fiction, maybe we expect it to be a little more accurate, but thereâs still that fiction aspect. And even when youâre reading, like, academic history, it still has its own biases, and itâs still a story - theyâre still telling you a story.
TBW: I love Hamilton. People started writing to us about Hamilton before it became a really well-known thing, like definitely before the cast album came out and before it just every time you turned around on the internet, Hamilton was in front of you, and I was like, âIâm sure itâs fineâ, and then when I finally listened to it I got super-excited. And there has been some discussion about it being used in classrooms, which I think is a really cool idea, because some of the history that it goes over can frankly seem really dry. Like the whole thing about assuming states debts? Who is really fascinated by that? But then I also think itâs a really good opportunity to talk about some of the social issues that were present at the time. Like, thereâs a whole song about how there was no-one else in the room when it happened. That was Thomas Jeffersonâs room! Iâm pretty sure that there were enslaved people serving that dinner, and so thereâs simultaneously the thought process of the folks who hear that song for the first time and donât think of that, and the people who really were in that room and were just having unguarded conversations around human being that they sort of forgot were there, who were actually serving dinner, which I think is a really amazing opportunity to, like, expore things like that. So not just so much to get the facts of cabinet rap-battles, but to talk about all of these other, more nuanced, things that kind of rise up - I didnât mean to make that pun! That was an accident. But you know what Iâm saying.
HF: I mean, Iâm just excited that it gets people excited about history. So even if Iâm not into it, that means nothing. I love how passionate people are now about wanting to learn more. So thatâs the magic.
[outro, including thanks]
