10/7-8/2006 - History according to Bob

So here's the next installment of "stuff I like that you might, too." Today, my first podcast goes up: History according to Bob.

Bob has been a high school and college teacher and has those qualities that I liked best in my college professors. He is opinionated, does his own work and speaks with a care-free ease that suggests he lives and breathes history. He talks about whatever he wants and seems to have encyclopedic knowledge on just about everything.

This is one of only two podcasts that I actually listen to more-or-less daily (the other being a basketball podcast). In addition to having the qualities above, I also like the length, typically 8-12 minutes. For my 22 minute commute, it allows a full show + 1 other, just what I want.

Now that I have listened to quite a few of these, I am getting a sense for a downside of Bob. Although he talks about whatever he wants, a lot of what he wants to talk about is military history -- very much not my thing. One of the reasons I have stuck with him (there are other history podcasts) is that he manages to breath life into even this particular subject.

And if 50%+ of his material is military, I can say two more things for him. First, his military material is quite diverse. I have listened to lectures spanning, the Hun, Macedonia, The French-Indian war and WWI, to name but a few.

Second, the rest of his stuff lives up to the "whatever he wants" description. A small subset of his topics include ancient religions, oddities of royalty and a series on U.S. presidential elections (now that's what I'm talkin' about...)

Bob is generally the first podcast I listen to every morning and he's always a great start to the day.

26,000 historic steps over these 2 days. Cheers,