Podcast Reflections: Behind the Scenes of Season One
Season One was a ton of fun and my first foray into a podcast series. In our last newsletter, I shared details on how we got started and began production. In this behind the scenes look, we’ll review the process of creating our episodes, how we managed the series outline, the production process, where we landed in terms of finishing Season 1, and how that set up Season 2. I’ll also talk about the long delay between seasons.
Outline & Structure
In one of our first newsletters to introduce the show, we shared a “very tentative” outline for the entire series: six seasons of eight episodes each. I’m still not certain how many episodes we will do when it’s all said and done, but we definitely are stretching out the early seasons compared to the initial plan.
The original plan of eight episodes for Season 1 were going to cover British History from Rome to the Glorious Revolution. This did not go as planned. There was so much more that we wanted to cover just on Roman history that we ended up using three episodes just for that arc (instead of just one). Magna Carta (1215) was supposed to be before the midpoint of the season, but this changed as we started to build out content past the first three episodes on the Roman period.
Turns out, that to really capture the context of the Magna Carta, it was important to ensure the proximate causes are understood: namely, a) King John being downright horrible, b) the massive debt and taxation burden facing John and his barons, and c) the dynamic between Pope Innocent III and the kingdom of England. We can take “a” for granted (though, understanding the family dynamics of King Henry II and his progeny is critical), but the debt and taxation, in turn, required exposition on the Angevin Empire and the Crusades. Understanding Pope Innocent III similarly requires background on both the Crusades and the very notion of the Papal States. We could continue walking backward from here, but hopefully this illustrates the point. Further, Magna Carta did have some precedence from Anglo-Saxon (pre-Norman) tradition and even the Coronation Charter of King Henry I.
Bottom line: Chris and I felt pretty good about our understanding of history when we started, but we realized that there is a lot of important context and interesting history that truly allowed us to understand how and why the fateful day at Runnymede went down.
What looked like we could do in eight episodes ballooned to about twenty.
Production
We recorded Season 1 throughout the course of 2021 with the intent to stay a few episodes in front of our release cycle. And, we did decide to release our first block of episodes to paid subscribers (primarily via Chris’s podcast network) before going to a public feed. Episodes began to drop in May 2021. New episodes remained pretty consistent through the end of 2021 wrapping up with Episode 11.
Now, I’ll be honest with you… Episode 11 was not supposed to be the last episode of Season 1. In fact, in the recording (which unfortunately has a view audio glitches due to bandwidth on my end) we do not say anywhere that it is the end of Season 1. I made the call to end Season 1 with the eleventh episode because a) I was falling behind on developing notes and transcripts for the following episodes, b) the “Birth of Parliament” did seem like a pretty natural breakpoint, and c) we released the episode in late 2021 which also seemed like a good breakpoint between seasons.
That’s why we ended up stopping at Episode 11—or at least call it the end of Season 1.
Our production process also evolved over the first season. For the first episode, very little of our notes were transcribed literally. Even the cold open was unscripted. We had a bullet-point outline with some notes and a handful of quotes. It worked ok, but it made us both a little uneasy in our delivery. For the next two episodes, the cold opens were fully scripted, and we had a bit more structure in the outline including some notional timing suggestions to help us stay on track.
By Episode 4, we moved to a fully scripted outline. That said, we’ve tried to keep our tone as conversational as possible and will move off script for extra color and insights along the way based on feel. There are some podcasts out there where you can tell it’s all fully scripted and read verbatim. We want to be more conversational but still keep the train on the tracks and hit all the points of content. With a few minor exceptions, we do the episode in one take.
I handle the research and show scripts. Chris handles the editing and publishing.
We both had career and personal changes in 2022 that derailed recording. We tried here and there to get things going again. In furious spurts, I was still able to advance episode scripts; neither of us stopped researching and improving our knowledge of history so that we can share more with you.
Earlier this year (2025), I finally cracked a formula to expedite my writing using ChatGPT as a co-pilot. I’m still fact-checking and reviewing copy. This helped jumpstart script development again. About a month ago, I decided to pursue a career change that will allow me to spend more time on this podcast and some other creative ventures (stay tuned and I’ll share more on those endeavors when appropriate; or just follow me on Substack).
What’s Next?
Well, Season 2 is about to start. Season 3 is making strong progress in pre-production. Barring the unforeseen, we will be back to our regularly scheduled programming here very soon. That’s why the Substack feed has been re-releasing Season 1 (this time for free and not behind the paywall). We’re here to stay!
In Season 2, we’ll pick up in the 13th century, orient ourselves, run through the kings of England from Edward I through the Wars of the Roses covering the Black Death and its impact on politics and the economy along the way. We’ll go through the Tudors and look at broad technological and philosophical changes in Europe at the dawn of the Modern Era including exploration and the Protestant Reformation. That sets the table for the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution. That’s how we’ll wrap Season 2.
In Season 3, we’ll finally cross the Atlantic to look at Colonial America, the American Revolution, and its aftermath.
Here on Substack, I plan to make more frequent posts with episode companions, deeper dives, side stories, and other content. Some of this will be premium content, so please consider upgrading. Now that I’ve changed careers, every little bit will help from you!
See you in Season 2 very soon!