Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.The number of history professors now regularly declaiming on podcasts suggests audio is the preferred medium of today’s historians. Lucy Worsley, Suzannah Lipscomb, Mike Duncan and the Dans — Snow, Carlin and Jones — are all at it. And no wonder: it’s cheaper than TV and a lot less onerous than writing a book. The UK’s most popular history pods come from Goalhanger, which is co-owned by former footballer Gary Lineker and produces the chart-topping The Rest Is . . . series along with Empire and We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Now it has launched Journey Through Time, hosted by British-Nigerian historian and commentator David Olusoga and American academic Sarah Churchwell. What separates this show from its stablemates is its focus on little-known stories (I’m guessing there will be no Tudors here). It also marks a departure from the majority of Goalhanger podcasts in its hosts not being white and male. This is welcome, though I look forward to a time when Lineker and co will also entrust a woman, or women, to host a show without a male chaperone.Journey Through Time is now on its third episode. Following a decent opening double bill on the 1916 Black Tom Island bombing in New York, Olusoga and Churchwell have moved on to the story of Victoria Woodhull, the “completely forgotten” American who, in 1872, was the first woman to run for US president (spoiler: she didn’t win). She was also a pioneer of the women’s suffrage movement, the first to open a brokerage on Wall Street and the first to become a newspaper publisher. Lots of firsts, then, which makes for a compelling and illuminating story that also takes in spiritualism (as a youngster Woodhull made a living as a medium) and divorce.The hosts are fluent, authoritative and accessible, though they haven’t yet got the spark of other Goalhanger double acts such as Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook (The Rest Is History), or Marina Hyde and Richard Osman (The Rest Is Entertainment), who do a good line in convivial chit-chat. Here there’s a slight sense of listeners being talked at, which may or may not be due to an over-reliance on scripts, rather than two hosts being in conversation.All this may come in time; it can take a while for a new pod to find its rhythm. But another minor grumble is that Goalhanger pods and their format — two experts talking on a theme — are beginning to feel samey and pedestrian. The company has clearly alighted on a formula that millions of people like, and therefore sees no reason to change it. But, given its considerable resources, there could be more finesse and variety, and more interesting sound design. Time to try something new in the next project?
