Heather Cox Richardson:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Now & Then. I’m Heather Cox Richardson.

Joanne Freeman:

And I’m Joanne Freeman.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Sadly, this is our final episode of Now & Then. So today we wanted to reflect on the show and we brought in our producers to help us celebrate the moments that have made Now & Then so special. We’re thrilled today, perhaps more thrilled than they are to welcome the members of the Now & Then production team.

Joanne Freeman:

We are definitely more thrilled than they are. For once it’s like, “We’re sitting back all calm and comfortable and these guys look…

Heather Cox Richardson:

Like they’re in the hot seat.

Joanne Freeman:

I know. David Kurlander is the Now & Then editorial producer, and he has been responsible for researching and editing the then section of Now & Then. He’s also the lead day-to-day scheduler and editor. David also writes the weekly time machine column that has accompanied each episode of the show. Hey there, David.

David Kurlander:

Hi, Heather and Joanne. It is so surreal and exciting and terrifying to be on the air with you both.

Heather Cox Richardson:

David, by the way, is the one whose wedding we all went to a few months ago.

Joanne Freeman:

Yes.

David Kurlander:

Yes. I’m a married man

Heather Cox Richardson:

And with him is Sam Ozer-Staton. Now, Sam is now in law school, but he was the Now & Then producer who researched the now section of the show. He is, as I say, in law school now at New York University, but we dragooned him into returning to the studio today to be with us.

Joanne Freeman:

Forced him to race to the studio.

Sam Ozer-Staton:

I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I literally ran from Washington Square Park to be a part of this.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So welcome, Sam.

Sam Ozer-Staton:

Thank you.

Joanne Freeman:

Hey, Sam. Tamara Sepper is the executive producer of Now & Then, and she has overseen our tapings, has provided priceless direction. I don’t know where we would be without you, Tamara. You are always the voice of sanity in everything that we have done.

Tamara Sepper:

My husband would be very surprised to hear you say that, Joanne.

Heather Cox Richardson:

The voice of sanity, but also the person who would listen to us argue for long amounts of time over what we were going to do next, and then quietly say, “I’m wondering about X.” And we’d all be like, “Darn it, there’s our next episode.” And then we’d be like, “Done.”

Joanne Freeman:

It’s true. It’s true.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And then we also have with us Matthew Billy and Matthew Billy is the audio producer of Now & Then, and he has worked tirelessly to make us sound good. He is always giving us ideas for our editorial production. But even more than that, Matthew has this laugh. One of the things that…There, it’s

Joanne Freeman:

That’s not the one, Matt. That was not the one.

Matthew Billy:

Oh, you want the…

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah. One of the things that I have worked for over two years now is to get Matthew to laugh because I so love his laugh. Now, he is running our session today, but we’re really going to be working as well on getting him to give to you the Matthew laugh. Hey Matthew.

Joanne Freeman:

The authentic.

Matthew Billy:

Hey, well, I mean you two make me laugh all the time. I think every episode, as I’m editing it, I’m just like laughing like crazy and my girlfriend is in the house wondering what I’m laughing at.

Joanne Freeman:

Well, and people have to realize too, that normally we can’t see Matt.

Heather Cox Richardson:

We just hear this voice of God going…

Joanne Freeman:

Right. Or “Someone quiet down the newbie bell.” Now, we wanted to start off today by just talking a little bit about the research, the recording, and the editing process that has been at the core of Now & Then. So David, why don’t we start with you. Can you talk a little bit about what it’s like to research the then in Now & Then?

David Kurlander:

Yes, absolutely. I mean, for me, broadly it’s paradise. I, upon graduating from college, studied American history, thought about getting a history PhD and archival history was my favorite thing. So when Now & Then began and I realized this is going to be my role, for me it was just like candy. So often what we do is we all meet and we decide on a topic and we decide on what our anecdotes are going to be. And usually Heather and Joanne, you’ll give me some kind of guidance over the type of content that you’d like me to find in the archive. So you’ll say, “We want a letter from Hamilton to Washington about some military campaign. We need you to find a colorful line in it.” Or “We want to capture the culture of a certain advancement in trained technology. We need to find some kind of folks in newspaper from the middle of the country that can give us some evidence of how people were feeling about this.”

And I go in and try to find a good brief quote that we can read on the air and put that into a prep document that then I send over to both of you in advance of our taping. And the most thrilling part about it for me is that I never know what either of you are going to do with these raw quotes. I have some concept of maybe what will be interesting about it or why someone might be significant. And I try to pick ones that are going to be fun and funny and illustrative of that. But each week for me, I would say the most exciting part of the whole Now & Then process is just figuring out what you’re going to say about some little morsel. And every time I’m surprised, I laugh, I’m challenged, I’m intrigued by the way that you use this content. So for me, that’s pretty much the process, is finding these quotes, these pieces of context and then being really odd and inspired by how you weave these historical narratives around them.

Joanne Freeman:

But I want to say too, that you’re not giving yourself enough credit. Because you don’t just find quotes. We always talked when we planned an episode, we talked about buckets. And every episode had for a while at least, three buckets and you filled the buckets and they weren’t just filled with quotes. You were doing research and you were finding patterns, and you were really sketching out a story there. And you’re right, then Heather and I got to play with it, but we played with it because you put stuff in the bucket. So don’t just call yourself quote guy, you were a lot more than quote guy and you really filled up the buckets for two and a half years.

Heather Cox Richardson:

With things like the aerial bombing in San Francisco or whatever it was. So we all went down that rabbit hole and discovered that there’s a restaurant out there that still has beams in it that came from the strafing that happened at the beginning of World War II. Remember that?

Joanne Freeman:

I don’t even remember this, Heather. I have no memory.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I’m probably making it up. But-

David Kurlander:

I think it was the Battle of Los Angeles.

Heather Cox Richardson:

There you go.

David Kurlander:

There was that sort of sci-fi-

Heather Cox Richardson:

Battle of Los Angeles. Yes.

David Kurlander:

And then it turns out maybe it never even really happened, that it was all kind of a panic.

Joanne Freeman:

And sometimes we would do that in the middle of an episode, we would have a rabbit hole and then we would be like, “Wait, David, that happened right? We think it happened. Wait, let’s all…” And then couldn’t hear in the background, all of us going, looking it up to see

David Kurlander:

Feverish research.

Joanne Freeman:

Yes.

David Kurlander:

But I mean, I never thought I would know so much about these nooks and crannies of American history. I hardly knew who Chester Arthur was when we started news work.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Oh my God, I’m glad I didn’t know that.

David Kurlander:

I know. Scandalous revelation here.

Heather Cox Richardson:

What about you, Sam? What was it like to gather the now part of the show?

Sam Ozer-Staton:

Well, as you guys know, the process of gathering the now really is just settling on a topic altogether. And it feels a lot like a group therapy session. It feels a lot like this just hanging out. And we’ve lived the last two years together. So often what we’re doing is reacting to the week’s news and often it’s incredibly upsetting. And sometimes the topic picks itself. I’m thinking when Roe v. Wade was overturned or when we’re seeing the January 6th Hearings. And everyone’s following the story, but there’s context that is missing that we need to add or that we need to process. So on one level, we have the obvious ones that we’re all coming together and processing, but sometimes someone slides into your DMs on Twitter or we’re on vacation and we’re like, “Wait, why are there vacations?” Or “Why are there board games?” So I think what makes this so special is that they come from any which place these topics. And what makes it beautiful is that we come together and get to tell a story.

Joanne Freeman:

Wouldn’t you say, Sam, that, and I bet all of us would say this, that part of the challenge of doing this show in this particular moment in time is that you sometimes had to wait until the last second to pick the topic or the now, because within a three-hour period, something gets overturned or turned upside down, and then suddenly all of us would be like, especially you, Tamara, you’d be like, “Got to wait for the news cycle because whatever.” But Sam, that always put you in an interesting situation.

Sam Ozer-Staton:

It did. And I also think it’s why this collectively is a body of work that I, at least am so proud of, because I think it’s a document about this moment in history. And I remember when we started, Biden had just assumed office and maybe we thought it, well, it might be a little calmer than it was in the past couple of years. But there has been more history made every day than we could possibly imagine. And so it’s been fun to do this therapy with you guys in response to it.

Joanne Freeman:

It has been history, political history, therapy kind of in a way each week. And so given what Sam just said, Tamara, talk a little bit about the process of guiding the show, given the amazing, crazy, upside down, ever racing news cycle and trying to pick between things that are amazingly immediately topical versus broadly important and how you steered things?

Tamara Sepper:

I think for me, my main approach was informed by you guys and what I learned from you, which is to ask, “So what?” And “Who cares?” And early on when we started producing the podcast, you shared that that’s a question that you post to your students. And I thought it was a pretty brilliant way to tease out what’s important about any given story that we’d be telling each week. And for me, actually, my favorite parts of producing the show is the conversations we had in preparation of each episode to not only gather these anecdotes that David would research and the news that Sam would compile, but to really ask why are we even talking about this? What can we learn about this to help us make sense of the stuff that’s happening today? And I think that was the original vision for Now & Then, is to help listeners make sense of all this crazy stuff that’s happening each day and put it in a historical context, which teaches us that maybe it’s not so crazy crazier things have happened before and continue to happen.

Joanne Freeman:

What I love about what you just said is you said, “So what and who cares?” And that came out of an episode where Heather and I both realized that for our students when they write something, we want them to talk about why it matters and I’m the so what and you’re the who cares. Is that how we broke it down?

Heather Cox Richardson:

Right.

Joanne Freeman:

So that’s what we say to our student. “So what? You wrote this, so what?” And what you just did, Tamara is basically said, “Yeah, I do that to Heather and Joanne all the time.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

No, I remember that. The things where it’s like, “Okay, so we’ve got all these buckets and it’s interesting, but I mean-

Joanne Freeman:

“So what?”

Heather Cox Richardson:

…who cares?” Yeah. And Tamara has kept us on track for that one.

Sam Ozer-Staton:

It’s so in keeping too with your guys’ respective sense of humor that the Joanne would be the so what, but the Heather would be the blunt who cares.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Although of course, I learned that from a traumatic experience in graduate school. So I guess, in the end it did us all some good. And then there’s Matt. Matt, what has been your experience of managing the audio at Now & Then? And I have to just add in here that what I remember most about your time here in addition to your laugh is when we were trying to do a show on NFTs and none of us could figure out what NFT was. And out of the blue you come on and you give us this brilliant 13 minute disquisition on the history of NFTs and the meaning of NFTs. And then you went away again. And I’m like, “Who was that? How did that happen?”

Joanne Freeman:

Who was that masked man?

Heather Cox Richardson:

Exactly. So were there any particular challenges you felt you had to deal with here, and is there something that made you laugh as much as you have made us laugh?

Matthew Billy:

Well, I mean I laugh every episode without saying. But I mean the biggest challenge for me is actually dealing with the volume of the third host of the show, Newbie, the History Bird. Every episode I need to choose how much chirping is in and how much bell ringing, but we pick an appropriate amount to make sure everyone knows that Newbie is there.

Joanne Freeman:

I love the fact though, that you are so patient for a while, Matt. And then at a certain point you were like, “Can you tamp down the bell ringing just a little bit?”

Matthew Billy:

Well, the bell’s pretty loud, Joanne.

Joanne Freeman:

I know. But you were patient up until that point.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Of course, Joanne can’t hear it at all. And I can hear it, but mostly because of her mic, I can hear her primarily, and Newbie’s in the background. So when you were like, “The bell, somebody’s got to do something about the bell.” I’m like, “Really? Is there a bell back there?” And of course, when you started playing it, it’s like, “Oh. Oh yes, that’s really quite loud.” And she hadn’t heard it at all.

Joanne Freeman:

But you were patient Matt, and Newbie, and I appreciate that.

Matthew Billy:

Of course.

Joanne Freeman:

Now Heather, let’s talk a little bit about how we have approached the preparation for each episode of Now & Then, and that’s changed a little over the course of the last two and a half years. But what would you have to say about what stands out to you about that process?

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, I have to say that the amount that we talk ahead of time about the meaning of whatever our topic is, and what we bring to the table for that topic has so expanded my own understanding of American history. That has been one of my most favorite things. So whereas, we’ll go into an episode and I’ll be like, “Well, this is obviously a story about X.” And you say, “Well, not so much. I think it’s a story about Y.” And then we throw in what Tamara and David and Sam and sometimes Matt and almost always Newbie have to say about it. And we come up with new idea, hear Newbie chirp?

Joanne Freeman:

I did.

Heather Cox Richardson:

With novel interpretations that have really pushed me. And one of the things that I have said to you since we learned we weren’t going to go forward with this was that “I don’t want to lose that.” Because at our ages, and of course you’re older than me.

Joanne Freeman:

Oh my God. Okay, wait a minute.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I had to put that in.

Joanne Freeman:

Wait minute. You just put that out there. How many months is the difference?

Heather Cox Richardson:

I don’t know. It’s like a couple, right?

Joanne Freeman:

Right. It’s like five, six. So I just feel the need to put that out there since you say that every episode.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Every time. In some way, if I possibly can work it in, I do

Joanne Freeman:

Always.

Heather Cox Richardson:

That’s rare, I think for somebody to have that kind of challenge on their desk every week, at our ages where people are always bringing new material and challenging not just the arguments but also the theories behind them just has felt to me to be extraordinary and I’ve thoroughly appreciated it. How about you?

Joanne Freeman:

I feel the same way. And I don’t know how much people do or don’t realize this out there in listening land, but we were really hammering away and agreeing and disagreeing and trying to come at the so what and the who cares between the two of us even after the episode was planned and after we had Sam and David’s preparations.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, and part of that, I think comes through in the episodes that they were very creative. We learned as we went, and they really did feel like conversations in which we were adding to our own knowledge and with luck, that of our listeners as well. It was a period every week to be smart and learn stuff and be creative.

Joanne Freeman:

And to have fun.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Did we have fun? I don’t remember that part.

Joanne Freeman:

I don’t know. All of that fake laughing that I did.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah, you should see the faces of all the producers at that, because apparently they too dragged themselves kicking and screaming through these episodes.

Joanne Freeman:

Like, “No, no, not another episode.”

David Kurlander:

No. Well, there were always moments when we were having these conversations about, “I think this is X, I think this is Y.” Where you have this internal monologue where it’s like, “Well, this is work. We’re putting together the episode.” And then you zoom out for a minute and think, “I’m getting to listen to two of the most awesome history professors in the world work through these really complicated ideas, and that’s my job.” And those moments of recognition that, as Sam said, it’s both therapy and group therapy about what’s going on in our world, but also just the educational value as a producer to get to be a fly on that wall and get to participate in that discourse, has been truly thrilling. And I think having this time to reflect and sadly to confront the end of the show, it’s also really helped me to fully appreciate how special of an experience that was to get to kind of wrestle with history in that way with the two of you.

Joanne Freeman:

And that’s what the show puts out there, is the wrestling. It wasn’t fully scripted and we didn’t come in knowing what we were going to say. And that’s pretty cool if you could put something together like that and keep it going in a way that it actually consistently always says something that’s useful and often important. That’s a pretty cool thing to be able to do.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And I have to say that’s one of the things I’ve really appreciated about it from the whole team, is that it’s got a lot of content. There’s so many things out there that is somebody’s opinion, and if you’re lucky, you’re going to get one new piece of information. And I felt like every episode was chockfull of content that even I didn’t know, and that just felt like it was a really good use of an hour of your time in a way that I don’t always feel like our time is well used. So I appreciate that from all of you.

Joanne Freeman:

For more CAFE history content, check out Time Machine, a weekly column by our editorial producer David Kurlander.

Heather Cox Richardson:

You can receive the Time Machine articles through the free CAFE brief email, sign up at cafe.com/brief. We said going to talk about our favorite moments, and this seems like a really good transition for me to say that one of my favorite moments was the very first episode that we did, because it was about American foreign policy on which neither Joanne nor I were experts at the time. And I put that caveat there because we spent a gazillion hours on the phone, on Zoom, whatever, going over and over and over what we thought the importance of foreign affairs was to, at least American domestic politics.

Joanne Freeman:

It had me worried because I thought, “Oh my God, if we have to do this every episode we’re in deep trouble.” Because those were long, really interesting, but intense, thoughtful conversations in which we were really wrestling with what we thought in a way that we hadn’t before.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, and from that, the reason that I put that first on my list of things that I loved was because I’ve never looked back. It helped me develop what was becoming a budding interest in foreign affairs. And I’ve spent the last two years reading everything I can get my hands on foreign affairs, which is the kind of sparking that we had hoped for. So I loved that and I loved how much time and effort it took all of us to put that episode together, because it did set, I think a precedent for “We’re going to do this right and we’re all going to learn stuff from it.” So I loved that one. A lot jumped out to me, but the other one I absolutely loved was the story of Calypso drums, and that one has stuck with me forever. David pulled that story out. We were doing an episode on musical instruments after Lizzo played James Madison’s flute.

And the story behind the Calypso drums I really loved because it was a situation where the people who lived in Trinidad had been forbidden by their colonial overlords, if you will, the colonial government that was overseeing the islands, to use their indigenous instruments because they were thought to be instruments of rioting and trouble for the people who had taken over the island. And what I loved is that the more that people tried to stop them from making music, the more determined they were to create music on their own terms. And so they literally make music from a freaking oil drum. They literally turn an oil drum into a musical instrument. I don’t think there’s anything I’ve ever heard that more fully demonstrates the power of music and the power of humanity. I just absolutely loved that.

Joanne Freeman:

The power of music and the need for music, the importance of music, that it has to come out somehow.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah. That was one of my favorites and then I may double up this one. Come on, Joanne. Mushroom gentleman. I love that idea. I love that idea. Go ahead, tell them what it is.

Joanne Freeman:

Oh, it makes me very happy. And it seems to make everybody happy because it sounds ridiculous, and yet it makes so much sense. It’s an 18th century idea at a time period when people’s roots were known and their reputation was known and their families were known and people in one way or another were literally rooted in places and were known commodities. A mushroom gentleman was someone who, a gentleman, so an elite or a person who beamed into a situation or a place and nobody knew where he was from or who his people were. Basically, he sprouted up in the dark and was kind of a fungus growing up in the shadows.

“Who are you? Where do you come from?” You’re sort of in a dark place in the woods and boom, you’re a mushroom and you’re there, but you don’t really, even according to the idea at the time, have roots. So mushroom gentlemen, were sort of scary commodities. It just says so much about the time period, but it’s also a goofy, ridiculous idea. And almost whenever I talk about it, because of course I find ways to talk about it very, very frequently, it makes people laugh, because it captures so well this idea, this very early idea that people coming up out of nowhere and how scary that would be, but also how primal that that would be. And it’s a ridiculous expression as well.

Sam Ozer-Staton:

It’s also interesting, because I just ran down here from Washington Square Park and saw a whole different kind of mushroom man over there.

Joanne Freeman:

I wasn’t really thinking about that kind before Sam, but now that’ll be in my head whenever I say mushroom gentlemen.

David Kurlander:

I was also going to say that I can’t get it out of my head because yes, in New York we see certain kinds of mushroom men, but I think also just we’re living in this time of wild tech entrepreneurship and new trends in AI and in crypto coming at us all the time. And there are always these celebrities who emerge. I think we did this episode in the context of Sam Bankman-Fried, and that’s how we got to the mushroom gentleman concept. But now, every time that there’s some new tech hero on the cover of Forbes or on my Instagram account, the first thing that flashes into my mind is Joanne saying, “Mushroom gentlemen.”

Joanne Freeman:

“Mushroom gentlemen.” Although, we have in front of us some of the dialogue from when we talked about it, and what’s standing out to me in front of the other is, I say mushroom gentlemen. And you say, and this is a quote from you at the time, “You didn’t want to date a mushroom gentleman.” And that would be true, you didn’t want to date a mushroom gentleman because really, who was he, a mushroom gentleman?

Heather Cox Richardson:

I want to hear what your favorites were. But of course that brings up the fun of things like history, mystery date.

Joanne Freeman:

Yes, open the door to your mystery date.

Heather Cox Richardson:

But remember, you and I were going to do our own version of the Mystery Date board game in which apparently, because remember one of the common themes here has been we had such different upbringings that you know things very well that I’ve never heard of and vice versa. So you had played mystery day and I had not, and I am still over here gobsmacked at the idea that apparently the game was you were supposed to dress in a certain way so that you got the guy behind the mystery door. I’m not entirely sure I’m clear on the concept yet.

Joanne Freeman:

I’m not sure that I totally remember. What I remember is you had to do certain things and take turns and then sooner or later you got to open a door and your mystery date was on the other side. And there were three good mystery dates and then there was the loser mystery date who was basically an intellectual. So the people who basically I date all the time now was the loser. But I remember there was a sports guy and I think a guy in a tuxedo, and I don’t remember what you did in the game that led you to open the door, but in the end you were either rewarded or punished for whatever the heck it was that you did to prepare yourself for your mystery date. I don’t remember the game, I remember what I just sang is the jingle from the commercial, from this game from 1970.

Heather Cox Richardson:

What about you? What are some of your favorites?

Joanne Freeman:

I have different favorites in different ways. One of the kind of shows a type of show that was a favorite for me, and this is particularly because so much of my work is like pre-Civil War. My last book dragged me up to the Civil War and that was like, Ooh, so modern, but normally I’m even earlier than that. And what the show did was, in a real here and now, as opposed to Now & Then kind of way, I had to reckon with what we were doing and how that was going to shape my thinking about it and my observation about it in the moment. So for example, when we were talking about hearings and the power of hearings over time, and this was when the January 6th Hearings were about to happen or just happening, and what we were talking about ultimately by the end of our conversation and by the end of recording the episode was the simple fact that they’re happening regardless of the outcome really mattered.

The fact that there was a line drawing moment that these hearings represented was important. And that ended up being, first of all, I think a really important insight having to do with what happened during the January 6th Hearings. But I watched that idea echo around. I was asked about that idea a lot of times by various media outlets. It wasn’t something I’d been thinking before. And so that very much shaped the now in a way, our history shaped my sense of the now in a way that maybe I wasn’t necessarily used to. It was powerful. And I think I felt the same about episodes that we did like, the one we did on critical race theory or the one that we did on cancel culture, in which we really delved in, “What is this thing? Where did this thing come from? How do we define this thing?” At moments when everyone was talking about them and they’re being tossed all over the place and no one really wants to define them because they’re handy dandy catchalls that everyone can use for whatever purpose they want.

And we here got to really try and capture what it was in a historicized kind of a way. And I guess, in both of those cases, the work was so obviously important in the moment kind of a way. And it’s not that I don’t think my work is always important, but I was being shaped by that work as we were doing it. It was changing the way I was responding to our environment and it was changing the way that I was describing it to other people. So that actually mattered a lot to me. I would say another kind of moment that was a favorite for me or a kind of favorite was the episode that we did, and I guess it was at the end of last year, Things Are Looking Up episode when we were trying to decide what to do at the end of the year and looking forward to the next year.

And I think you commented that there were a lot of pundits saying “Things are looking up. Everything, things are getting better, looks, seems cheerier.” And we wanted to talk about, “Okay, so what do we think about what’s coming and about what just happened in the last year?” And what strikes me about that is we spent a lot of time thinking about what the ultimate message should sound like. Because we as public minded historians think a lot about not just what we’re saying to the public, but the importance of it and how we hope people will respond, what impact will it have? And in this case, the sort of Things Are Looking Up episode, we were trying to come up with a way that we would on the one hand not encourage people to say, “Oh, well it’s not as good as everyone says, let’s go crawl in a hole. It’s all over.”

And we also didn’t want them to say, “Yay, everything’s good. We can just relax.” That we wanted to find a middle point that felt useful and productive and accurate. And again, that’s like real time history/politics in a way that I suppose I didn’t anticipate coming into this podcast. And it felt to me like important work. It changed me and it changed the way I saw things, but it also felt like and continues to feel like to me something that’s really important to do. And I love the fact that it was two historians, two women historians doing that kind of work. Also, talking about being women historians, I will never forget us reckoning with the overturn of Roe v. Wade in that moment. As historians we’re thinking about it and we’re thinking about feelings in the United States about abortion in the past. And then as American women, we had a lot of feelings about it. And we were balancing all of that, trying to figure out something to say that would be useful. And that was quite a moment that was really powerful.

And it was the kind of moment when the stuff that you and I do together, the kind of conversations that we have, the way that we urge each other on and feed off of each other and compliment each other. That was really obvious, I think in that episode. And I have to say also, I just generally speaking, love the silliness. Because you don’t always get permission to be funny and silly when you’re a historian. I mean, you really don’t. And particularly as a woman, like, “Oh, people must take me seriously.” And I vented my full silly in this podcast with you. And one of my favorite things to do was to make you laugh so that you either leaned back in your chair and sort of went vaguely off screen or put your head down on your desk. I knew I had really succeeded in something if I basically moved you out of frame to make you laugh. And sometimes actually Newbie did it and it wasn’t me, but that always made me feel happy in an episode.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, I certainly appreciated that.

Joanne Freeman:

And I should say we can see each other when we’re doing the podcast, we can see each other during the episode.

Sam Ozer-Staton:

I want to just add one thing to that, which is that I’ve been struck by the degree to which that has given a permission structure for our broader Now & Then community to take a similar approach and tone. And when we get tweets or emails or voicemails, there are people dealing with really heavy and serious topics with really serious questions. But there’s also such levity and there are thousands of people who tweet about Newbie each week.

Joanne Freeman:

I know.

Sam Ozer-Staton:

And so I do think that tone has also been a really special thing about the show.

Joanne Freeman:

The show has been special in that way. And the remarkable amount of attention that newbie gets registers to me as a kind of, “Oh, humanity is actually really good.” There are always people out there who are commenting on a little green bird that they’ve never seen and who exists only by banging a bell in the background. That’s just such a sweet, nice thing that in the midst of everything that we’re talking about. And you’re right, that was kind of a freeing thing for the audience that I just hadn’t thought of it that way before, Sam.

Heather Cox Richardson:

What about you all? What were some of your favorite episodes or moments in the show? How about you, Tamara?

Tamara Sepper:

So one of my favorites comes from the first episode we did on the Supreme Court, and that’s the story of how Chief Justice John Marshall got his job. And the reason I like it is because it shows how historical pivotal things can result from happenstance. So Joanne, you tell the story of basically there’s a vacancy, John Adams needs to appoint a new chief justice. He goes to John Jay who had already been on the Supreme Court, he becomes governor of New York. John Jay rejects the position because at that point he doesn’t think Supreme Court is a prestigious enough job. So he rejects it and it comes to John Marshall to deliver this refusal letter to Adams. And he goes to Adams and delivers this letter. And it just so happens that Adams says, “Well, then I believe I must nominate you.”

Joanne Freeman:

That’s exactly basically what he says. Yes, “I believe it must be you then.”

Tamara Sepper:

And then he goes on to be this really influential, longest serving Chief Justice is on the court for 34 years, and he really solidifies the role of the Supreme Court and the federal government as a whole. Obviously, he wrote the decision in Marbury v Madison, which establishes judicial review, meaning that the federal judiciary can say whether a congressional act is constitutional or whether executive action is constitutional. And that principle didn’t really exist before. And then he issues all sorts of other really important decisions that gives meat to the federal government. But I was just struck by how so often things that happen by accident can have really big influence on the trajectory of history.

Joanne Freeman:

I was going to say the accidentalness of it and that it becomes history. And we all look back and John Marshall in all capital letters because we know who John Marshall is, but that he was there at the time and became that person put in that position. And then everything happens after that point. It’s a reminder of the contingency of history and the…What? Now you’re-

Heather Cox Richardson:

I was totally going to set you up with that and go, “There’s a word for that, Joanne. What is it?

Sam Ozer-Staton:

We should have all shouted it together because I was thinking the same thing.

Joanne Freeman:

And of course, this is a great example of what you just said because all I’m thinking in my head is “This is a moment for me to say contingency.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

And the rest of us, Joanne, are all going, “This is a moment for us to get Joanne to say contingency.”

Joanne Freeman:

“To say contingency.” I was like “Accidentalness and contingency.” Because I must say that a million times throughout this podcast and on the law.

Joanne Freeman:

It’s the law. Contingency. But it’s important in history because contingency, the idea that we don’t know what’s going to happen when you’re living in the moment, you forget that when you look back in time. So it’s pretty crucial. And the fact that we don’t know now what’s coming next, and I’ll stop ranting about contingency now because everyone’s like, “There goes Joanne again.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

We’re all glazed over. That’s right.

Joanne Freeman:

I know. I’ll just shut that down.

Heather Cox Richardson:

But what about you, David? Do you have memories that stand out for you?

David Kurlander:

Definitely. And I think this concept of trying to find a different angle, a different lens through which to view a familiar topic, that actually is sort of the basis of one of my more memorable moments of research and then of the actual recording process. Because we wanted to do this episode on UFOs, and this is when the Chinese government in February had sent over this surveillance or spy balloon that floated around the United States for a number of days and became this obsessive Twitter story for a while and was eventually shot down. And we had a long conversation about how we could cover UFOs in a novel way. Obviously, there are thousands of history channel documentaries and rabbit holes around UFOs. And we decided we didn’t really want to do Roswell, that it was a little bit too cliche and we wanted some different events.

And we found two of our three anecdote buckets. We found the first one, which was John Winthrop’s diary. He had seen a number of strange sky bound occurrences. And then we found the Battle of Los Angeles, which we mentioned earlier in the episode, which was this panic around a potential attack that happened in LA during World War II. But we couldn’t find the middle anecdote, we couldn’t find anything interesting. And I was kind of typing around on Wikipedia as we were having our planning discussion and found this weird mystery air ship’s craze from 1896. And started digging into it. And you were both like, “Okay, I guess we could do this.” Yeah, it turns out in 1896 in Northern California, 19 different counties spread to the south, people reported seeing these massive flying dirigibles. There’s never been a definitive explanation of what they saw, whether it was just kind of a collective confrontation with flight, which was just beginning to be understood as feasible.

This was before Kitty Hawk and the Wright Brothers. But there was some evidence we could do blimps, we could do planes in short order, and maybe it was just this feeling of what was coming. There was some discussion that it was an organized hoax by a kind of eccentric San Francisco dentist. And it became this rabbit hole for me where I was just thrilled reading this. And I’m from San Francisco, so it also felt like this local flavor and characteristically bizarre San Francisco lore.

And ultimately, I found this weird poem that was in the San Francisco Examiner. It’s a 72 line Iambi trimer poem, and it’s bad, it’s really bad. And the lines that I shared with you both was, “Oh, say you airy phantom, far up a loft afloat. Are you some nervous goblin who likes to steer a boat?”

Heather Cox Richardson:

Aye yai yai.

David Kurlander:

And I remember Joanne delivering this oratory and just the laughter that both of you had about it and how we all tried to speculate and then you speculated on the air “What was this mystery airship thing?” But I thought it ultimately was just such a joy, both the research process, the fact that there’s a continuous historical mystery and getting to kind of unearth this story that maybe wasn’t quite as mainstream and then watching what you did with it then.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Wasn’t quite as mainstream. As you say, “Maybe wasn’t quite as mainstream.”

Joanne Freeman:

Now you sound like me.

Heather Cox Richardson:

That’s right. Are you some nervous goblin who likes to steer a boat? The magic of American history, which is of course the fun of American history, just like Tamara was saying, is that it can be so serious and so vitally important to our entire globe and everything that is on the heavy angle of that scale. But so much of the fun of it is that human beings are just so wacky.

Joanne Freeman:

Yes. It’s human. The human component can make it poignant and touching and tragic and funny.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Are you some nervous goblin who likes to steer a boat

Joanne Freeman:

And somewhere-

Heather Cox Richardson:

Makes you want to hang up your writing hat, doesn’t it? Because how can you ever top that?

Joanne Freeman:

Yeah. But somewhere spinning in their grave is the person who wrote that saying, “I’m getting my 15 minutes. I’ve gotten it twice. The nervous goblin, I knew it would catch on sooner or later.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

What about you, Sam?

Sam Ozer-Staton:

My favorite episode has actually already been talked about. It’s so interesting, it’s the grifter episode. And I think it might speak to more just sort of my and David’s mindset as late 20s people now, which is that there are so many grifters, so many influencers online, and it’s so confusing who to trust. And so these are really big questions facing our generation. And one of my favorite stories was this story of Steven Burrows that Joanne pulled out, who was this sort of late 18th century, early 19th century, really early conman, who stole the sermons of his father and sold them for $20 a piece and became then this sort of big time forger and criminal.

What it made me think about was sort of, and what we talked about in the episode was, there is this sort of American notion of the traveling salesman, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, charismatic leader. And you want to believe that you can come from nowhere and do something in America. But the question is, when does that get dark? When can we not trust that person? And there’s so many people in the zeitgeist now where we’re asking ourselves those same questions.

Joanne Freeman:

The land of grift.

Sam Ozer-Staton:

Exactly. So that episode spoke to me and then just picking up Joanne on your human point, I loved every moment we spent with Carol Anderson just every moment in the prep calls, every episode she was a part of, and just to hear the three of you laugh together. And I wish the audience could have heard some of these prep calls. Because sometimes when you’re preparing for something, there’s sort of a neurotic, “What are we going to say?” But with her, you three knew the stuff cold and were sharing and teaching each other. And so that was just on a human level, really beautiful to watch and made me feel lucky to be a part of it.

Joanne Freeman:

I’m really glad you mentioned her because she was great. She was amazing to work with. Those were really fun episodes.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah, totally. You also mentioned Sam, and we were talking about this before, things like the episode on speakers of the House. And one of the things that was fun for me was doing categories in a sense, because of course, we know a lot about different speakers of the House, but to actually look at those things as an institution of their own was an entirely different lens on everything we were doing. I have always thought about Nancy Pelosi in an entirely different way now that we have compared her, not just comparing her era to other eras, but to say, this is what she did versus this is what other powerful speakers of the House have done and why she ended up looking so much more powerful than so many of them.

Sam Ozer-Staton:

And I think also the Pelosi episode is such a great example of the balancing of the now and the then. I mean, we had that episode, I think in the days before the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill was passed, and we saw her counting votes and we knew it was a historic moment and we had a story to tell about how she whipped the votes for Obamacare and how she stopped the privatization of social security. And we told how she got elected to Congress in the first place. And a lot of that is context that people that are reading the front page of the New York Times aren’t seeing. And then we went back and talked about past speakers. So it was that balance.

David Kurlander:

And I will say that was one of the most fun moments to work with Sam on a prep. Because I was off in Henry Clay land, which is a great place to be. But then usually we’d kind of do the Now & Then separately and check in a little bit throughout. But Sam, a fellow San Franciscan knows Nancy Pelosi’s career like no one else and truly has this encyclopedic knowledge. And it was one of those episodes where we were checking in throughout and saying, “Where can we find either something that’s Pelosi esque in these past speakers or where can we find places where she’s totally singular?” And it also gave me a completely new appreciation of her brilliance and also of that balance between the now and the then.

Sam Ozer-Staton:

Yeah, thanks for saying that, David. And there was one more quote, I wish I had it just from memory, but she said about Obamacare, like “We’re going to crawl through the tunnels and run up the mountains and go into the water, but we’re going to pass this damn bill.” And that as sort of a motivating, inspiring message at this time when it felt like nothing could be passed.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Right. And certainly what’s happened since her tenure as House speaker has really illuminated just how much work it-

Joanne Freeman:

So many things.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah. But just how much work it is to get stuff through.

Joanne Freeman:

Yeah. Matt, we turn to you.

Matthew Billy:

So I think my favorite moments were the ones that were silly and human. So I’m going to hit you with a throwback real quick, from episode 33 that we aired on January 25th, 2022 that was called When Americans Can’t Turn Away. And when we discussed the revolutionary period. Joanne, you described this period as “A period of unpleasantness.” And the topic was the Battle of New Haven, which as everyone knows is not a very well-known battle. And Heather, you introduced it like this. “I’m so sorry to do this to you listeners. This might be a good time to turn this podcast off. Joanne, tell us about the Battle of New Haven.”

Joanne Freeman:

I can say I did not remember that.

Matthew Billy:

And Joanne, you reply, “Why are you telling people to turn off the program as I’m about to speak?” Anyway, so laughter ensued, and then Joanne, you went on to tell the story that you got from the diary of the former president of Yale, Ezra Stiles. And as the British were approaching the shores of New Haven, they make landfall, they’re marching around town, they’re plundering a lot of houses, and the president of Yale is trying to move all the furniture and all his documents out of the library. And he wrote in his diary says, “As I was removing my furniture from Yale, I broke my favorite Fahrenheit thermometer, which I’ve had since 1762.” And Heather, you let out this…

Heather Cox Richardson:

Come on we’ve all-

Joanne Freeman:

Make you-

Heather Cox Richardson:

…but we’ve all been there. You broke your favorite thing that you had for all those years.

Joanne Freeman:

In the middle of the Battle of New Haven. So the Revolutionary War is happening around your walls and you’re like, “I broke my favorite thermometer.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

That’s right. The minute you said Battle of New Haven. That’s exactly what I thought. I was like “That poor guy in his thermometer.” It really hits home. It makes it all come alive.

Joanne Freeman:

Yeah. Oh, it’s totally true.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, so we also wanted to give listeners a chance to share some of their moments and thoughts from Now & Then. And so we’re going to run some of those and we have to do a shout out here of course, to Newbie who is not actually at a microphone, but he is here I guess, to hear what people say and to make his own commentary on it. So I want to thank you all. It has been just an incredible pleasure to work with all of you, and I think I’ve said elsewhere that you’re really family at this point, and I have every expectation that we will be working with each other going forward, especially you, Joanne.

Joanne Freeman:

Well, likewise, I feel like it’s the dynamic team, but also we are a dynamic duo, and this has been beyond fun as well as beyond feeling like important work for me. Both of us, I think have had the sense that those listening, this has been a joy as well, that folks listening have had a sort of personal experience or personal attachment to the episode in many ways, because you and I, we kind of live our history and I think we beamed some of that out when we did the show. And so as we sort of move towards the end of this episode, I also just want to thank the folks out there who have been listening, because you’ve mattered and you’re been part essentially, of the Now & Then family and community as well.

Heather Cox Richardson:

We always think, “Who cares? So what?”

Joanne Freeman:

“So what?”

Heather Cox Richardson:

And why does it matter to our listeners? And how can we keep you entertained for your hour a week?

Joanne Freeman:

Yes. Thank you for listening.

Terry:

Hi, this is Terry from Pennsyltucky. My husband and I have loved listening to the weekly Now & Then podcast. We listened separately. He listened during his commute, I listened during my run, then we would have a date together listening to Backstage. Fostered conversations for the rest of the week. A favorite episode of ours was the Militia Movements with the Posse Comitatus, and we will always consider ourselves part of Now & Then Ideological militia. Thank you so much, ladies. It was a real pleasure.

Anne:

Hello, it’s Anne Hudspeth from Austin, Texas. And I am so sad that my favorite podcast is ending. What I love best about the Now & Then podcast is your friendship. Is just delightful to hear two smart AF history nerds joking about Thomas Jefferson and reading archived manuscripts as one does. You just make everybody want to have a history professor BFF. So thank you for both helping educate us and giving us a window into your relationship. I hope you continue to work together in a way that allows us to witness the fun. I’ll miss you guys.

Annie:

This is Annie from Randolph, Vermont. Really sad to hear the show’s ending. So many favorite parts. I’d have to say learning about female journalists throughout the ages, including Martha Gellhorn, just the incredible adventure stories involving her were just really enlightening and led me down a wormhole of discovery among many other notable moments from your podcast. Thank you so much. You’ll be missed.

Ed:

Hi, this is Ed in Shoreline, which is by Seattle, Washington. And I regret very much that you are leaving and I hope you can get another venue somewhere because you guys are great. It’s that depth you bring with this, you have the image of America with two angles, the present, the past. And more than that, and it’s really meant a lot to me. I’m the 79 year old caretaker of a hundred year old mother. Anyway, I just want to throw that in. Thank you so much for what you’ve done.

Emma:

Good morning. This is Emma, and I’m calling from Englewood Cliffs in New Jersey. I’m calling to thank Heather and Joanne for such a wonderful, wonderful podcast. I’m really going to miss Now & Then. I think what I’m going to miss the most is when the two of them just laugh and laugh together. It’s just such joy to hear. It’s like listen to two amazingly intelligent good friends just hanging out. And so you get history, you get friendship, you get companionship, and you get Newbie chirping and oodling in the background, which is just an added bonus. So thank you, Heather, thank you, Joanne. Really from the bottom of my heart for such a great, great podcast.

I’ve learned so much. I listened to you on my ferry just concentrating and thinking about all these interesting historical things you’re saying, all the ways history teaches us so much and you’ve taught me so much. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Enjoy your book tours and your other history chats. I hope Now & Then comes back. I love the producers, I really love what you guys do, so thank you so much, oodles to Newbie, and have a great day everyone.

Heather:

Hello, my name is Heather and I’m calling from Lisle, Illinois. I just wanted to say thanks to Heather and Joanne. Now & Then was my favorite podcast. One of my favorite episodes was the 2022 episode on polling that dropped just before the 2022 midterms. It really gave me hope. A favorite Joanne moment from the show was when you sing the Tom Lehrer song about Wernher von Braun, because my parents played that for me too when I was growing up in the 1980s, and it has stuck in my head ever since. And a favorite heaven moment was when Heather shared that Dick Gregory’s autobiography left lying around her home influenced her when she read it as a child. That really made me think about what’s lying around my home that my nine year old might pick up and what other things might influence him. Thanks for all the great shows. I will really miss them dearly.

Karen:

Hey, this comment is for Now & Then. This is Karen from New Hampshire, and I just want to say I’m so sorry to hear that Now & Then is going away. I’ve listened to every episode along the way and I will miss it. My favorite moment as you asked is, let me pick. It could be Heather then drooling over Jefferson or could be Joanne singing. But really most of all, I think my favorite is the insightful commentary from Newbie because that bird knows how to tweet.

Sandy:

Hi, this is Sandy. I’m calling from Oslo, Norway. I’m crushed that the Now & Then podcast is coming to an end. And although, I have a lot of great memories from listening to the podcast, I think my favorite is when I hear Newbie getting excited about history and politics. My own parakeet, budgie, cutie bird passed away not too long ago, so I have to smile and have a little bit of a pain in my heart every time I hear Newbie getting excited. It’s my favorite part of the show. Best of luck in the future. I’ll continue to get the letters from an American in my email and follow Joanne on Threads. Bye.

David Kurlander:

And then I do just want to say thank you Heather and Joanne so much for being such brilliant figures in all of our lives. I know I speak for each of us that this journey with you has been one of the more meaningful moments, not just professionally, but personally in our lives and getting to process what’s going on in the world with two not only incredible thinkers and historians, but also people has been truly irreplaceable.

And I do just want to also shout out that the archive, as with all of American history, it will live on, you can go to cafe.com/now-and-then and that’s and A-N-D, and listen to any of our episodes. You can also see the show notes and the transcripts of each episode, and that’s not going anywhere. And you can also scroll back on whatever player you listen to podcasts on and listen to all of our episodes there. And I know I’ll be doing so for a long time to come and that it’s just the beginning for our collective collaboration together.