Podcast Reflections: How We Got Started
Some insights on our origin and glimpses of what is coming next.
Four and a half years ago,
and I launched the History of Modern Politics. The idea had its seeds even earlier. Chris and I met back in 2008 if I recall correctly; he was newly installed as the Executive Director of the Libertarian Party of Indiana; I was blogging about Ron Paul and Barack Obama among other things. A few years later, he launched We Are Libertarians, a podcast that helped catapult his career into one that would go beyond the drudgery of third party politics and into an expert in the new media space.I followed my twisted arm into a quixotic run for Congress in 2016 where I was a guest on his show a couple of times. By that time, Chris and I knew that we had a shared love of history and political thought and philosophy. We recorded a couple of episodes in 2018 that began to form the seeds of our idea to get past the debates of the day and discuss the development of, initially, libertarian thought. But, that gave way to both bigger ideas and personal life distractions. A vision grew but had to wait.
By late 2020, we finally decided to jump in and do this thing. As Chris has noted before, the span of what we wanted to cover changed rapidly from our initial expectations. Here’s one exchange from back in January 2021 as we are beginning to plan the outline:
Matt: We should start an outline, though. Like how much British content do you want before we get to 1789? Or 1764 for that matter?
Chris: I think 89.
Matt: 89 or even 87 is the most important turning point as we get to the Constitutional Convention.
Chris: Oh 17. I thought you meant the glorious Revolution.
Matt: No I’m talking 1787. Your goal was history of the founding era, right? I think we need a deep British exposition to set the stage. But, if we focus on the Founding era, then we’d have a lot of 1787-1812 content.
Before long, I was convinced not only to go back to the Glorious Revolution (which we will finally cover in Season 2), but back to the development of the relationship between king and Parliament that underpinned the events of the 17th century. It didn’t take long to pull that thread to go back to clan-based societies and the influence of the Roman Republic.
In early 2021, the episode outline for Season 1 had eight episodes that would go from Rome to the Glorious Revolution. Once I started writing outlines, it quickly became apparent that we would need to cover French history, papal history, the Crusades, and more. It looked like eight episodes would take more than a dozen to tell the story at the depth we wanted to explore. The outline came together, and we started recording in 2021. The journey began.
We launched this Substack as one of our platforms for distribution and to provide additional content. In the inaugural post, Chris outlined the goals of the podcast:
To understand modern politics, people must have an understanding of how current arguments have developed. One can learn a lot of insight about current events by examining the past.
To understand the long fight for societal liberty and personal freedom and why it cannot be squandered.
To define modern libertarianism, conservatism, and progressivism through intellectual history.
Guide the listener to resources to learn more about the subjects briefly covered in the series.
These goals remain today. This is a passion project that lies at the intersection of our love of history and love of politics—even if the latter is a complicated relationship. We are not who we are today, nor do we think about things today without a lens to the past. The MAGA movement has echos of the past. Social democracy and progressivism have echos of the past. The very notions of Constitutional norms and precedents that capture today’s headlines have their roots in the 1700s which, in turn, have their roots in the 1200s, and so on. The arguments of today require an understanding of the past.
Liberty is a constant tension with power. Hunter-gatherers, members of the clan, subjects of Rome, vassals and peasants, merchants, religious dissidents, pioneers, enslaved individuals, native populations, industrial age workers, and the bourgeoisie all sought liberty as we do today. Those with power, whether through force, decree, institution, or money, have always been on the opposing end of this fight. The battle is as old as time and will not end—but the tides of liberty have ebbed and flowed based on the power structures, living conditions, and events of the age. We hope to showcase these tensions, their proximate causes, and both the victories and losses of liberty through the lens of this podcast.
These battles have been the basis of political thought since Plato and the times before. We chose to start with the Roman Republic because it uniquely shaped the origins of thought in England which, in turn, shaped America. The limits of liberty, the power structures which constrain it, and the terms under which these dynamics should change have been the core issue that political philosophers have grappled with through the ages. However, more than not, it has ironically been the power dynamic between those already in power that have shaped the reality of liberty through the ages. Magna Carta was not birthed by a peasant uprising; it was the result of the king’s powerful and immediate vassals fighting for their liberty—the elite against the elite.
In our journey, we will eventually get to modern day views: conservatives, populists, progressives, institutionalists, libertarians, and other shades of gray. To get there, we will explore thinkers, writers, lawyers, lords, bishops, popes, and kings. Each step of the way will build toward America’s own glorious revolution which we will cover in Season 3, while Season 4 will build on the nation’s birth and take us on the road through American political history as parties developed, changed, and reinvented themselves to meet the demands of their day.
This takes a lot of research. We use primary sources where we can and secondary sources liberally: books, other podcasts, Wikipedia, academic papers, and, yes, now even ChatGPT. We take accuracy seriously and verify details from whatever source as much as we can for the amateur historians that we are.
As we get ready to launch Season 2, in my next post, I’ll share more about the production of Season 1 and the vision we have for the future of the podcast and this Substack feed.
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