Ed and Brian look back over 10 glorious years

Nathan Connolly: Major funding for BackStory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

Joanne Freeman: From Virginia Humanities, this is BackStory.

Ed Ayers: Welcome to BackStory, the show that explains the history behind today’s headlines. I’m Ed Ayers.

Brian Balogh: And I’m Brian Balogh.

Ed Ayers: Now, the turn of a year is always a time for looking back, as well as looking forward.

Brian Balogh: Yeah, you know, it’s hard to believe, given how young we look Ed, but in 2018 BackStory marked its 10th anniversary on the air.

Ed Ayers: Wow.

Brian Balogh: So, in this special show, we’re gonna take a brief look back and a major look forward.

Ed Ayers: Now when BackStory began, it wasn’t even called BackStory. Brian, our friend Peter Onuf, and I were embarrassingly enough-

Brian Balogh: Go ahead, say it, Ed.

Ed Ayers: The Backstory hosts.

Speaker 4: The Backstory hosts is a production of VFH Radio with the essential support of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia.

Group: It’s The Backstory hosts.

Ed Ayers: Yup, that’s us, the Backstory hosts. Hi everybody. I’m Ed.

Brian Balogh: I’m Brian.

Peter Onuf: And, I’m Peter.

Ed Ayers: Give us a call folks, 877-451-5098.

Brian Balogh: We tried out lots of different theme music. Some of it worked. Some of it not so much.

Ed Ayers: Now, in those early days, we took calls from listeners who had historical queries for us to answer.

Brian Balogh: That’s right, but remember to ask us about US history. Call us about something we actually know, or at least we think we know.

Brian Balogh: Over the years on BackStory, some things have fallen by the wayside and been replaced by new things. When Peter Onuf retired, Ed and I were joined by two wonderful new colleagues, Joanne Freeman and Nathan Connolly. Even though BackStory has evolved, one thing has remained constant-

Ed Ayers: Our devotion to the discipline of history.

Brian Balogh: No, no, Ed. It’s our bad jokes.

Brian Balogh: Well, I can’t blow bubbles. I can’t skate. I can’t swim, but I can do history.

Peter Onuf: Us, not know the answer to a question? Ed, you’ve got to be kidding, kidding around with history that is.

Brian Balogh: What is your fondest memory from the early days of BackStory?

Ed Ayers: Well, I remember the supernova that gave birth to BackStory. Andrew Windham, who was our godfather for the first years of the program who really imagined it and who helped it succeed, came up to Peter and me and said, “Hey, have you guys ever thought of doing a radio show about history kind of like Car Talk?” Peter said, “Now, there’s two problems with that. One, history’s not funny and two, we’re not funny.” Then, we immediately said, “Hm, well, if we did do that, we’ve got to have our friend Brian.”

Brian Balogh: We need someone else who isn’t funny.

Ed Ayers: Exactly. Somebody who is exactly as funny as we are, which is a low standard. Then, I remember coming into this very studio and looking at each other and thinking, “Hey, okay. Now, what do we do?”

Brian Balogh: Well, Ed, speaking of funny, as I recall, when Andrew pitched this idea to you, both of you guys just laughed. You said, “It was the most ridiculous thing.” I remember you pitching it to me and asking if I’d join you and I just laughed and we both said, “Who would want to listen to a bunch of historians for an hour?”

Ed Ayers: Especially if we weren’t talking really about mufflers and brake jobs, things like that.

Brian Balogh: Well, there’s another memory for you. We were not allowed to mention that show, very popular, on Public Radio about automobiles.

Ed Ayers: I know.

Brian Balogh: It was banned.

Ed Ayers: It was forbidden as was the word historiography, but I think after 10 years you and I can say whatever the Hell we want to say.

Brian Balogh: That’s right.

Ed Ayers: Yeah, you’re right because it was seen as déclassé and also a deep comparative disadvantage to compare ourselves with the most popular shows on radio at the time. It didn’t take long for us to realize this is not going to be like Car Talk. We do have an expertise that people might be curious about and we’ll share it. That’s what was in common and we’re not related, but we were good friends and decided we would embark on this adventure on our own and just take it wherever it went.

Brian Balogh: One thing I do remember about the early days is that camaraderie seemed to come through to our listeners, if I can use the word plural and-

Ed Ayers: I’m sure all our spouses were listening to the show. Talking about call-ins reminds us that we were originally a radio show. [crosstalk 00:05:15].

Brian Balogh: History Hotline was one of many names.

Ed Ayers: It was. As a matter of fact, it was very heartening. Early on, some radio stations in Virginia, in particular, sort of took a leap of faith with us. I especially remember WMRA in Harrisonburg in the Shenandoah Valley. Now, this actually sounds pretty good. We’ll run it and people liked it well enough.

Brian Balogh: To get ready for the big time, we auditioned with live radio. Do you remember that?

Ed Ayers: I’m trying to forget it.

Brian Balogh: Specifically, Ed, we’re on a call-in show, I think it was Norfolk Radio Station, and a caller called in with a very understandable question. He wanted to know if William and Mary, the university, was founded on pirate’s booty. All three of us are sitting around the table, we’re each pointing at the other person to answer it.

Ed Ayers: We never did answer that question, but we did come up with another question. What would be a better organizing principle for a radio show rather than a call-in? We decided that, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to come up with a theme each week.” Actually, originally, it was each month because it was too much work to imagine doing this every-

Brian Balogh: That’s when they didn’t have weeks. Those were only invented several years ago.

Ed Ayers: Then, the idea was, “Okay, if we did have a theme, what would hold it together?” Now, people will remember this because somebody mentioned it to me last week. People often say, “Hey, I really liked you on the radio.” Often it’s older listeners who don’t really know about podcasts and they kind of wonder where we went. One said, “You know, I really love your show. I liked it when you did the different centuries.”

Brian Balogh: Yeah.

Ed Ayers: The original idea was that Peter was 18th and 17th and 16th centuries, I was 19th, and you were 20th-

Brian Balogh: Guy.

Ed Ayers: Guy, exactly. That was the idea. We weren’t brothers, but we were dividing things up by the-

Brian Balogh: We all fought over the 21st century.

Ed Ayers: Yeah, that’s right. We pretended to each have the true answers to American history, which invariably lay in our different centuries, when, in fact, we quickly discovered, it always was in the 19th century. I was broad-spirited and allowed you guys to poach on my territory.

Brian Balogh: Some things never die, Ed.

Ed Ayers: I think that actually worked for quite a few years. It built in some narrative tension into the show. How could we-

Brian Balogh: Absolutely.

Ed Ayers: … claim to have been the pivotal moment here or there. I think the thing that’s made the show so interesting for us are the guests that we’ve had.

Brian Balogh: For sure.

Ed Ayers: I don’t know. It’s hundreds of people now who have joined us and have shown their faith in us that we will ask the questions that will kind of reveal the really interesting stuff that they had discovered. You never would have imagined there’s that many people who’ve explored this many topics in American history.

Brian Balogh: I have to confess. There’s one thing I miss very much from the past-

Ed Ayers: What’s that?

Brian Balogh: … even though it lasted every so briefly.

Ed Ayers: Yeah?

Brian Balogh: That is a segment that I invented and did the research for called Gear From Yesteryear.

Ed Ayers: Oh, yeah. It’s coming back to me and now.

Ed Ayers: The sound of the harps. That dulcet melody reminds us that Brian, our own 20th-century historian, persists in hatching puzzles to humiliate us.

Peter Onuf: Oh, no. You mean it’s Gear From Yesteryear? He’s back with that?

Ed Ayers: Ah, Peter, don’t worry, man. You with your 18th-century rationalism and me with my 19th-century romanticism, we’re more than a match for our modernist friend over here.

Peter Onuf: Are you kidding? Well, okay. Take it away Brian!

Brian Balogh: Okay, you’ll recall that last week I described not just one but two pieces of gear. We actually had a double gear.

Peter Onuf: A double gear. Wouldn’t that work better on Car Talk?

Brian Balogh: Yeah, a double gear.

Peter Onuf: From yesteryear?

Brian Balogh: You got it, Peter. One item replaced the other. Now, I want you to know, not to put you on the spot, guys, that literally dozens of listeners wrote in and guessed this. They thought it was easy, okay?

Ed Ayers: Brian, I’m glad you’ve kept the faith in your earlier idea, but it’s a funny thing about BackStory, we don’t really fixate on the past very much. We talk about history, but we’re pretty forward-looking really. The one thing that’s remained constant is that we’ll try different strategies to connect with as broad an audience as possible for the best history possible. And, amazingly, there are other people trying to do that in their own way.

Brian Balogh: Thank goodness.

Ed Ayers: In fact, we decided this year that we would give the BackStory Prize For Public History.