PODCAST – why and what for?
As I promised, I will open up the story behind my podcast Menneisyyden Jäljillä briefly in English as well, since the project will play a significant role in my website. You will find the Finnish version of the story here.
What podcast?
I launched my own podcast in the beginning of January 2020 because I am fascinated by history and the medium of podcasting. Menneisyyden Jäljillä podcast is a podcast sharing interesting stories and viewpoints on the past.
Each episode will share a story with the help of a track of the past (”menneisyyden jälki”) that the guest of the episode has chosen to match the theme of the episode. In each episode, I will welcome an expert that works on a way or another with history. An expert can be a historian but does not need to be one because history is such a multifaceted field that there are multiple voices to be heard.
The podcast Menneisyyden Jäljillä will talk about history, how it affects our present and how the past is around us in different ways.
Why podcasting?
In spring 2019, I worked in a project as a project assistant, and my job was to produce a podcast series on how to do a podcast for a course material. Doing the podcast series was something I enjoyed very much. I love interviews and interviewing since I have worked as a journalist since I was 16 years old. I love hearing the stories that the interviewees have to share and I get impressed and inspired by their expertise and enthusiasm on their specialities.
During my history studies at the University of Helsinki, I have noticed how wonderful research there has been done and is. Both researchers and students have fascinating interests that differ from each other, I think it is a shame that those stories have not been heard in a volume that they deserve. That lighted up the idea of a medium where I could share those stories: not only stories from my university, but rather stories on the historical field in Finland.
Through podcasting, I want to popularize historical research and share interesting stories of the past and the ways how the past is around us.
How the podcast will be present in my website?
This website will host the podcast which is why I will post regularly about the podcast here in Finnish. Every time a new podcast episode is published, I will introduce the episode and share my thoughts on it shortly. Even though those blog posts are in Finnish, I will write a tiny summary in English as well.
The reason why I want to write those blog posts is simple: Firstly, then someone who is interested in the podcast will have a way to get familiar with the content of the episode before deciding whether to listen to it or not.
Secondly and maybe even more crucially, I want to share the tracks of the past, which will be at the core of each episode. The track of the past equals basically a primary source that the guest of the episode has chosen to reflect the theme of the episode. A primary source functions as a way to get closer to the past and prove that those sources form the basis for every historical research – in other words, history is a true and human story that is reasoned with primary sources.
The other reason to share the source information via blog posts is transparency. In my opinion, convincing (historical) research is always open with the background of research: who is the one doing it and which is the material that research is based on. Sometimes historical research is written persistently in passive form – in a passive narration, things just happened without defining the subject or agent of the event. It has been thought that a passive narration provides certain transparency. However, I disagree.
I believe that a subject or agency of historical narration should always be clear which is why I prefer to emphasize who is interpreting the tracks of the past and what can be concluded based on the process of plausible interpretation. That is why I find it essential to share primary sources upon which the conversations of the podcast episodes are constructed. Then the listener can check whether to buy the interpretation or not.
I will also share tips on the literature if there pops up any in the episodes.
Episodes in English?
I have chosen to produce the podcast in Finnish because that is my native language and most natural to work with, but it also specifies the target audience nicely. Still, I am open to suggestions of special episodes in English, so if you would hope me to produce a few episodes in English as well, please let me know!
That’s it for now, hopefully you enjoyed the story behind the podcast and if you have anything to ask about my podcast, do not hesitate to ask!
LOTTA VUORIO 