Dr. Wing is a OLLI @Berkeley member and volunteer
After the pandemic started in March 2020, I discovered podcasts. I became enamored with the flexibility to choose from an incredibly wide range of topics, innovative formats, and a diversity of perspectives — none of which was available on public radio, which had been my go-to source of audio programs. What’s more, I enjoyed the freedom to listen to a podcast whenever and wherever I wanted, as long as I had my smartphone in hand.
I have sampled a variety of podcasts. One example is Citizen Chef, which focuses on critical food-related issues, including new policies and efforts to end hunger, increase sustainable farming, and improve the working conditions of immigrant food packers. Another example is the Earful Tower, which features, among many creative offerings, audio tours of the 20 arrondissements of Paris, complemented by YouTube videos and Instagram stories.
However, I usually find myself gravitating towards history podcasts. Like many OLLI members, history is one of my main preferences for course topics. Here are three history podcasts in my podcast library:
East Bay Yesterday
Journalist Liam O’Donoghue takes deep dives into the people, places, and events that comprise the histories of towns such as Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, and Alameda. In a recent episode, O’Donoghue zeroes in on Julia Morgan via an interview of Susan J. Austin, author of a forthcoming book about Morgan for young adults. A remarkable episode that I found in the podcast’s archives is called “Before the A’s: The East Bay’s Earliest Teams.” Guest contributor Cyrus Farivar visits a “vintage” baseball game and obtains an explanation of the baseball rules, equipment, and field of the 1880s. He features the story of my paternal grandmother’s cousin, Lee Gum Hong, aka Al Bowen, who co-founded Oakland Chinatown’s Wah Sung baseball team and pitched not only for Wah Sung, but also for the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League and the Pelicans of the Berkeley Colored League. His Pelican teammate was Lionel Wilson, who later became the first Black mayor of Oakland.
East Bay Yesterday podcasts vary in length, anywhere from 40-to-90 minutes long. New episodes are released once or twice a month. A website provides photos and other materials relevant to each podcast episode. Listeners can subscribe to a newsletter. The podcast is ad-free and available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
For the Ages
Businessman and philanthropist David M. Rubenstein interviews the nation’s “foremost historians and creative thinkers” on U.S. history because “history matters.” Among those interviewed to date are 1) Philip Deloria, the first Native American appointed to a full professorship at Harvard, on the topic of the first inhabitants of the Americas; 2) Jill Lepore on her book These Truths, in which she provides a 21st century perspective on U.S. history; 3) Susan Eisenhower, on her biography of her grandfather Dwight D. Eisenhower entitled How Ike Led: The Principles behind Eisenhower’s Biggest Decisions, and 4) Erica Armstrong Dunbar on her book Never Caught, an account of George Washington’s attempt to recover Ona Judge, a runaway slave who had been in servitude to Martha Washington.
For the Ages podcasts are 30 minutes long. New episodes are released weekly. Similar to the other podcasts I have described, For the Ages archives all episodes for anytime, anywhere listening. The podcast is ad-free and available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The History Chicks
After meeting via an online group for moms, Beckett Graham and Susan Vollenweider created this podcast on women in history in 2011. Since then, they’ve released 209 episodes on individuals such as Hatshepsut, Marie Antoinette, Ella Fitzgerald, Frida Kahlo, Empress Cixi, Mary Shelley, Wilma Mankiller, and even Barbie and the Statute of Liberty. Graham and Vollenweider do extensive reading on each woman of focus and then take turns telling the woman’s story from birth-to-death. They take the perspective of the woman and speak in an engaging conversational style that brings her to life. As self-taught historians, the History Chicks take care to describe all their sources on an accompanying website and fact-check each other during the 120 hours or so they spend researching a given woman. Their format is to open with a 30-second summary of the woman’s life followed by a sketch of the woman’s historical context. They then launch into the woman’s journey through life.
The History Chicks episodes vary in length but are usually one-hour long. They are released every two weeks or so. A website cites sources of information and features portraits of the women, recommended films and books, including books for children, and other informative materials. Friends of the History Chicks can join a private group on FaceBook. The podcast includes ads. History Chicks is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and nearly every other podcast platform.
As a result of listening to these podcasts, I have enjoyed learning a great deal about the history of where I live, emerging thinking and research findings about U.S. history, and the biographies of women throughout world history who defied the odds to live lives outside their severely prescribed roles as daughters, wives and mothers. I have also been surprised. I thought my family knew everything about our baseball-playing ancestor Al Bowen. Many of my great-uncles played on the Wah Sung team with him and my dad served as their bat boy. Yet listening to the podcast story of Al Bowen playing for the Berkeley Pelicans with Lionel Wilson was a “wow” moment!
Linda Wing, Ph.D., spent more than 45 years working to transform public schools in order to enable students in the nation’s cities to learn and achieve at high levels. She is an active, and much appreciated, OLLI member and volunteer.