mm that's a really good. i feel like with tik tag there's such an easy way to reach so many people all at once and so i feel like with other social media platforms dms you can post an educational video, it might only hit maybe an audience that was already looking for history. but the unique thing with tik tok is that you can reach literally anyone and you can spread this wonderful piece of history and the lessons we can still learn from it today to anybody. that's that's something that i really like about the app for your tik tok. so how long are your lesson ins in history that you're putting out there? they span usually they go from anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute and a half but usually i try to keep it in the 62nd mark. how do you tell history in 60 seconds? oh man, i am a storyteller at heart. and so usually i start with a

hook to, grab somebody in and go straight into the person's history. like you're watching a mini biopic and. i add jokes in there to keep them to stay and i make sure to relate it back to what we experienced today. so the person leaves knowing the history, also knowing how it relates to their life in the present. so what are some recent examples of how you did that in? let me think. i one of my favorite tiktok that i've done is the of billie holiday. and i talked about how she sang the song strange fruit. you know this by the singer is billie holiday and she sang a song that angered the u.s. government and spoke out against racism. billie holiday, one of the most influential voices in jazz in the 1930s and forties. she had a rough childhood that ultimately led her to drug

addiction. but even with dealing with her mental health, she always turned to music. now, one day she came across a poem turned song by a teacher called strange fruit. it's sang of murders lynchings and violence across against black people. and how there were people that went her because they didn't want her to sing the song, because it was singing about the trauma done to black people and how people continued to try and silence her. and i think that her story in that tik tok was a very great example of how a lot of times our stories, our trauma, but also our are continuing to be silenced. and i thought that that tik tok was a great example of how it can be to tell our stories and have them survive, even while people try and censor us for folks who don't know the history, what was the strange fruit she was referring to in that song? so the strange fruit in, the song was a metaphor for black

people that were being lynched and they would be hung from trees as a terrible things were done to them. and so that strange fruit where black bodies being from trees, vast black history is the name of the tok. how did you get into history? my parents made it a value our home to learn black history. they knew weren't going to learn a lot of it in public. and we didn't. but it would be the kind of thing where almost every single day we were getting some new story about a black figure we would watch black history programing. it just a normal in my home to learn black history. i lived in a very pro-black home and so for me, because also weren't there also wasn't a lot of black history taught my school and not a lot of black stories being these black figures and this black history kind of became my superheroes and my comic book heroes in sense. and so that's really why i

became a history buff, because the more that i learned, the more i felt better about myself that i could do the same things that they did. where did you go to school? did you study history in school? i did study history in school. oh, do you mean like college? yes. oh, so i did not study in school. i currently to nyu for film because as adjacent to history. i love to story. i love telling people stories, really doing it in a way where you can feel they felt. and so that's where, my love history led me into filmmaking. you talk about filmmaking these 32nd to one minute, tick tock. you get to do a bit of acting sometimes in portraying some of the characters and the historical figures that you're talking about, right? yeah, i do. i do. and what that what is that like to try step into that for a second or two as part of a tick tock? well, you know, i've never been

asked that question before. i for the most part, like keeping the stories of the figures very light hearted, very joyful. so most the time i love bringing my humor, the situation. so it's really fun. see another side of the figures and what their humor would be. what? what they would laugh, the reactions that they would have wanted to in a certain situation. but every now and then there are like sketches within, the history tick tock where i do have to be serious and i do have to bring a level vulnerability like in the billie holiday tick tock i did a tick tock about fannie hamer and it's really important for me in those moments to pay to the portrayal all that i'm doing is i'm dressing up as these to balance that level of fun and joy and humor with the seriousness of what work was. so it's very i try to come at it

with a level of respect as much as my skill can with acting what ticktock that you've made has gotten the biggest response so far. how do you judge that? oh. man, i have made over 50 of these. i think the biggest one that i have seen go viral, i think has been the billie holiday. tick tock. but i don't measure the amount of success by the views anymore. i don't measure it by the amount of likes anymore. but i do it by what people are saying in the comments because i know that a tiktok is really impactful and really successful whenever i see teachers in the comments saying, i use this to my class or even in the comments saying i'm going to write an essay of this. i've gotten a comment where somebody said that they take notes every i post a black tik tok. so for me, success doesn't

really come from the numbers. it comes from the people's stories that i get, which ones have been used in classrooms that teachers have told you about and oh, i really wish that i could remember this like match the specific comment to the tiktok. you know what, there was a video that i made malcolm x and got a comment there that said that they going to use it in their presentation and that just made me so happy when i saw that. what your views on black month as in the educational field as a month to focus on black history. i think when it was created it was extremely extremely impactful and needed because it started shed a light on the immense contributions that black have made in not just history, but history all over the world. and just what we're able to do. i love black history month.

i've loved it since i was a kid. it makes me feel so special, especially because grew up somewhere that wasn't very diverse. but i do that. it is a month where we should be continuing to shed a light that yes, we're paying homage to all these black figures during this month, but should also be doing it every single month in every unit of history curriculum, especially in public schools. you know, it shouldn't be just regulated to one month. we're throughout history. we should be throughout the year. do you think your tock is is helping to do that? i really hope so. i really, really hope so. you know, i've this in 2025 will be six years that i've been making black history, education videos. and i think i really started to take the impact of how years this has been going on. whenever i meet people and they tell me that i taught them things or that like they learn black history from my videos and it just really humbles me and i

really hope. it encourages people that the, the kids that used to watch my videos, they grow older to, really fight to put that education in schools rather than the only black history you're learning being from an untrained teacher you know my i really that fast black history is not the replacement for history in schools i hope it's just a call to put it in education and in curriculum even more six years almost six years i've been doing this is it a moneymaking venture sometimes. sometimes i'll have a brand sponsor a video, but honestly, for the most part, when it comes to black history videos, i don't make money directly from videos. what's the end goal here? is this something? want to turn into a full time gig right now? i'm full time content creator. i work with brands on other

videos. sometimes do partnerships that are outside of social media. i've been a correspondent with nick news. i've been a radio with tech talk radio. i was radio host with them for about three years. so social media profession has taken me to so many different places, but for me, the end goal would just be to continue creating both on tiktok and on other platforms that evoke joy. i really, really want to be a as i said, i'm in school filmmaking. i love writing stories, especially just as i said before, that pertain to telling more stories where people can feel more light hearted as we go through things in this world that fight against that. so what will fast black history be focusing on in early 25, 2025? what's your upcoming tiktoks that you're doing well, you will have to watch, to find out and

where do people go to find it. you can go on my tik tok in other social media handle at taylor cassidy j fast black history is the name of the tik tok taylor cassidy. thanks for your time on american history tv thank you so much. well matt beat, a teacher and video producer with over a million followers on his youtube channel, mr. beat. he started that channel in january 2011. matt beat what's unique about presenting history via youtube. well, not as unique as it used to be, but in 2011 it was definitely unique. it's i think the fact that most people read history and even today that's the most common way to learn about historical. but in 2011, i would say most people, if they were watching videos of to learn history, it was on the history channel or perhaps like discovery channel or something that.

i, i was one of the first ones actually, to just start putting history videos on youtube. why did you do. well, i did not mean to have a broader audience at all. i made my videos first and foremost for my students in the classroom. at the time was teaching social studies to middle schoolers and was looking to make the content more engaging interesting to them. you know graders eighth graders can be a bit difficult especially getting them things like you know laws that were passed in the 1820s. so i just make these goofy videos sometimes my wife or my brother help me. and it was just way to me to make it more entertaining. i didn't make the videos public until a little bit later, and then i realized that other teachers were playing my videos for students. and then i was, oh, maybe i

should take this a little bit more seriously. i actually have a background in journalism. i used to work in tv and radio. that was my first career. so it was kind of cool that i could combine the skills of teaching history journalism. so it's fun. are you still teaching middle school history? no. believe it or not, i left classroom in 2021 after 12 years of teaching, and now i just make videos full time. how videos have you done in your years doing this? i only know this because i recently looked. it's over 750, so it's it's mostly american history because that's primarily what i taught. but, you know, i follow my own curiosity. so i've made about world history, geography economics. the main thing that people online know me for is my political history content.

i have a video about every single presidential election in american history. that was my first series in which. people were just watching it for fun as opposed to like students being assigned to watch it by their teacher, like having to watch it for homework. and that started to get bigger and 2017 and yeah, like now i'm kind of known as the president's guy on youtube because i have all these videos about presidents, presidential history. i have a song about every single president in american history, and i'm about to record my song about joe biden. actually. so that's exciting. what is your song joe biden going to say? well, what i do with the songs is try to cover all the good and the bad know, try to be as balanced as possible so, you know, major accomplishments. he had a lot of big laws that he was able to get passed. you know, some of the negative stuff as well. i got to mention his age in there and his communication

struggles. but you know, it's like one of those things where i think i'm i'm also a musician, obviously, the guitar behind me, i just think you're more likely to remember something if there's melody that goes to it. and so i actually insert jingles into my videos as well. i'll just start randomly singing something as just a way for me to try to get people to remember a certain concepts and stuff. which one of your president's songs has been the biggest hit so far? oh, i think this past year, believe it or not, the london johnson song did pretty well on spotify. i know. yeah. my president songs better than any of my music, for sure. people love just people love the presidents in general. like you know, presidential fact. and i have videos like i have a video about every president's

favorite type of food and that has million of views. people just love that stuff. what's the hook for the lyndon johnson song? if you want to sing a few bars? well i insert the chance that the student protesters campus shouted in opposition to the vietnam. in 1967, a lbj. how many kids have you killed today? and i. and i put i turned that into a line in the song. yeah. hey hey lbj you did it. lbj, how many kids did you kill today.

johnson. johnson. you did. what do you know about your audience? who watches these videos? i have met a lot of my at events like i just did event last week where i gave a presentation on john brown. i i love my viewers because like they have the same interest as me a lot of them tend to be younger of course a lot of them grew up with youtube and tiktok and i'm also on tiktok to a lesser extent. but yeah, that's the most exciting thing is like i did this other event at the kansas city public library and. it's a it's a series they do once a month and typically they an older crowd that shows up the

director of the series though was a bit cut guard when i did an event and all these kids showed up and like what the heck we're not used to all these younger people being here so that. so yeah i would most of the people that watch my channel are under the age of 40, believe it or not. how does your channel compare in the wider world of youtube channels? do know? well, a lot of us history tours, as we call ourselves, we we tend to know each other. we cross, we collaborate. i'm doing an event on a live stream tonight on mr. kerry's channel. he's another teacher in the classroom but also does youtube on the side. and so one thing i will say is about the history to our community is that we're very supportive of each other there's no drama like you see with certain other types of content. and i think the main thing is

that we're all just curious and we're trying to learn the stuff. we're not trying to promote any agenda. we're just love history. we all kind have our own issues, like i'm the american political history guy, you know, like i would say. jj is another one, but he focuses on a lot of times canadian history and culture because that's where he's so we all have our little issues and at the same time, like said, we all support each other, it's great as somebody who's taught in classroom, are you worried about the quality of the history that's in the history tuber community or is there bad history out there? absolutely. i worry about it all the time. we all worry about it. i worry about myself, always cognizant that, you know, just because i've this, just because i have a master's degree in history doesn't mean i'm an expert on history. so it's really important to me that my viewers understand that

i biased. i am getting this information from actual historians, so i lose my sources and the description. i have a script footnotes where you can actually try to verify certain facts might be controversial or perceived to be that way. i do make mistakes. occasionally i correct those usually in a pen. com pen comment at the top of the comments you'll see nobody's. perfect. but i think that there are a few bad actors out there. i think that a red flag, if you're somebody who's new to history content on youtube is if somebody never lists their sources or it just seems like they have an agenda like primary purpose for their is to promote something as opposed to just like being the person who loves to tell great stories or teach lessons. i think that's really like know why they're making their videos. i'm actually releasing a video here in a couple of months about

just explaining why i do this. so what are you going to say? why you do this? great. follow question. there. yeah i just in a nutshell. i do this because i care a lot about justice, the survival of our species. i think it's important that we solve problems, we make reforms as needed, but we also learn about what we do. we got right the past because a lot of times we do get it right in the past i know a lot of people, it's more fashionable say, oh, we must learn from the mistakes, the past. but i think just just as much a lot of times we're doing things right in the past, like i am somebody who defends the constitution all the time, though it is not perfect and so just, yeah, we need to survive as a society, as a species and to me that's really important that like my way to like help is just to like remind, remind all of us that, hey we've been

through this before. this is a rerun, you know, stuff like that. you mentioned a minute, you're biased. what are your historic biases? you think? i would say i'm somebody who i've spent a lot of my time reading about rich white just because i've always been fascinated about not only presidents, but, you know, senators and members, congress and plutocrats who had a lot of influence. and so that's my bias. i feel like there's a lot of history that i ignore because of that. i've been trying to get better about that, but also my viewers expect a certain thing. so it's been more difficult. but you know, this is why i would tell everybody, if you any interest in history and any basic video editing skills need to start a history channel because we need a lot of help for people who are worried about doing that. you said you do this full time. how does one actually make money

putting videos on youtube? well, primary way i make income is through the ad revenue. that's if you ever watch a video on youtube, there's an at the beginning sometimes in the middle or the end of the video. so i get a share of that. in addition, i have people that donate money to my channel on they can become channel members or through websites like patrick on their sponsorships which more and more i am hesitant to do because you know you don't want to promote something that ends up being even like remotely it might be perceived as scam or something. i'm always worried about oh is this really so i try to make it so that it's something i actually use. but yeah that's it. i mean, it's kind of weird that i'm able to i never would have expected when i became a teacher that this is what i would end up doing, like teaching random people around the world as

opposed to 150 students in the classroom. was there a moment when you realized that this job was taking off? yeah, during the pandemic that's when i realized so many students stuck at home and a lot of teachers assigned my videos for them to watch because a lot of my stuff covered stuff in the curriculum and i crunched numbers one day and it was kind of just mind. i was like, oh, wow, i could actually do this full time. it's also maybe sadly, i don't know. it's kind of sad to say that maybe teachers are not paid enough. that's another part of that, you know, you could think about. but regardless, i think it's kind of cool that i am able to do. i'm really lucky to be able to do this. what was your most popular youtube video you put out? well, now it's my how every president died, a video which recently surpassed 10 million views.

it's just insane to me how that happened. but. one of the earliest videos for me that off was i had a lot of in my world history class used to teach the freshman. they just asked me like why is it that so many people don't like jewish people, they don't like jewish people. and i didn't really have a good for them. and so this kind of made me realize i need to like explore this more and what ended up becoming a video that's simply titled why do people hate -- as a way? i mean, they got people to click that also has millions of views. unfortunately, it also has some anti-semitic comments underneath it, but it's so you kind of have to take that with it whenever you cover controversial topics. but i always say i, i embrace because oftentimes that's a way to trick people into learning otherwise won't be learning. how do you deal with the comments are you responsible for the comments? yeah i mean, you can moderate them.

i do. to a certain extent. however, it's impossible to weed out all the bad stuff. i have another video, the great replacement theory, and it's even worse. and i just i at a certain point you just kind of hope that, you know, these people maybe they're committing hateful things underneath my video. maybe they're doing that instead of something worse. the world, world, i don't know. it's not a good situation. i always joke around, i say, hey, fbi i if you want to keep an eye on some of these folks in the comments, was there video that you made that you thought was to take off that flopped all the time? you know, it's so unpredictable i would say the one that was the biggest disappointment as far as how it did, because spent so much time on it, was my family and i we took a road trip along, the oregon trail, it's the auto tour. and the gimmick was we rented a tesla and, you know, just like

the travelers on the oregon trail. for them, it was an adventure. they didn't know if they were going to survive or make it to the next destination in the year 2022, the the only way we could make it an adventure was to drive a, an ev and worry about finding a charger, a charging station along the oregon trail in wyoming. so that was the whole gimmick. we spent a lot of time making it my wife's. she helps out film. she she's a drone pilot became a drone pilot for. that video has a lot of good and it's very cinematic it's like a movie and it completely but maybe i'll a couple more viewers now how many viewers did it get it at last i checked think it was like 150,000 people watch that when i was hoping for a million because, you know, like i said, we put so much time into that. we spent like i spent a month working it. it's mr. beat, the name of the youtube channel. explain who mr. beast is and is

mr. beat a play on mr. beast. no, no, mr. beat. it's just my name. my name is matt beat. i was born that's that's the name i my legal name. and so i started channel actually before, mr. beast. and if you don't know who mr. beast is, he's the biggest youtuber in the world. he became popular, you know a few years after i started my channel and i was like, oh, well, i could change my name but at this point it was too late. so i just kind of kept it. it's kind of turned into a a joke and a meme online, a of people kind of they joke around about me, oh, you should give money while teaching history and stuff like that, because that's what mr. beast does. he's known for giving away a lot of money. exactly. so we fun with it. matt beat the youtube channel. mr. beat. how do people find this? if they want to watch of these videos, where do they go? well, yeah, you just search mr. beat on a google search or

youtube, and i pop up. although mr. beast will also pop up. but i you'll see probably something presidents related is one of your first search results. and that's me matt beat mr. beat thanks. taking time with american history tv well thank you for interviewing alexis coe a presidential historian, a senior fellow, the think tank new america, a new york times best selling author, and she runs substack study mary kill. it has over 4000 subscribers. alexis co what is a substack? a substack is a outlet that allows you to send newsletters to a variety of people at any that you would like. and there are other mediums you can integrate into it, but i use it solely as a newsletter. when and why did you launch yours? i launched my substack in 2021, somewhat unexpectedly as

something else that happened around that time, which was the pandemic, the archives were closed and substack out to me and asked if i would like publish regularly at once or twice a week in exchange for, you know, a small stipend. and i agreed, and that was only for a year. here we are a few years later and i'm doing it. you got to explain the name study, mary. kill. yes, that is how i primarily write books and i write big biography fees and i spend years them five six sometimes a decade and when i'm working outside kind of books i tend to feel one of three ways about something. i wish i could study it. i wish i had the time. i'm so in love with it. i shouldn't be studying it. i should just be genuflecting and. it's direction. it's so much fun. i just it it's it's it's pure excitement for me. and then kill is something that

i am not thrilled about. and i wish didn't exist. but it does. and those are sort the three categories that very often history outside of biographies fall for me. if you were go to your substack in your page, they'll see that you explain that the format here allows for, quote, a personal and certainly faster approach to presidential history. do you mean by a faster approach? i react in real time to whatever going on or often will do series or things that i wish i could do can't. but if there's something that's going on in the news, i will almost immediately respond in my substack i often will offer my readers a sort of inside glimpse into what i'm doing. if i'm publishing an op ed in rolling stone, i will write something called behind the essay. if i'm writing a book review in the new york times behind the book review, i'll put in things that i considered things that were cut and issues along the

way. what's also really fun is coming up and sort of understanding my my readers needs are in their questions and then coming up with a way answer them in the most direct in a manner. what are your fellow historians think about your do they follow you? they do. i mean, they like it a lot them have appeared. some of the the bigger historians in media today heather cox richardson and i he wouldn't identify a historian. but jamelle bouie from, the new york times has appeared, t.j. stiles, who was one not one, but two pulitzers. and so i they find it quite enjoyable. and so a little more from that about page, your substack you say think of this newsletter as my salon for the strange a secret alcove where i unleash thoughts, rants with some abandon flaunt my latest projects and occasionally drop mini biographies. they're hot, so give me of your recent rants and one of your

recent projects. i think one of my recent rants was. one of my recent rants was actually pardoning and this was before president joe pardoned hunter biden. i had been thinking a little bit about the power. the power, the pardon. it's such a big one for the president. it's one that comes with a lot of complications. so it's sort of always at the forefront my mind. and i started to think about how the pardon was a considered, whether it was considered appropriate when ford president gerald ford was about to pardon richard nixon and indeed pew was in the middle a study. they were in the middle of a study when this happened on this very and most people as we would imagine, disagreed with ford

pardoning nixon. but then what's really interesting is they followed up over that study and over time it changed the idea that ford had pardoned nixon in order to move forward was, considered the right call, which is what ford had said in his autobiography. and that a really exciting piece to do as because i had spoken to the director of the lbj library and of the ford library and a bunch of other presidential libraries because i was doing a series on how history works in different mediums and one being museums. and then i asked her, if she had anything to add to this and the director of the ford library emailed me the best letter from a child to ford after, he pardoned nixon and it said, you are right and half wrong. did he go on to explain why he was half right and half wrong? no, i think it was just implied. and that i think it explains the american electorate really well.

so if that was one of your recent rants, what's a recent project or mini biography? the one i'm most proud of is on gene grant, who is the forgotten co-founder of the new yorker. she been left out of every big remembrance that they've had, every book. harold ross, her ex-husband is cited. she stayed on their marriage and she also rescued magazine at many points. and yet appears on the new yorker's website. just a few times. and so i introduced this and it ran about 10,000 words. it a serialized biography. i ran it for a week and i did it with this explicit intention. i said, here is everything i could find on her? i hope one of you will pick this up and make it into book. i would love that. please take my research and i understand that at least two people are trying to do that. one has a book contract, another project that you talk about in your substack the founders look

like burns. what does that the founders look like? birds, you know, when you spend enough time with with founders and you also maybe have a bird chart your refrigerator, you can't unsee certain things in it started out as a tweet thread and i put something together on the newsletter people really loved it and so i made a calendar this year and it's been selling quite well, some for thousands. you talk about selling the calendar. do people pay for their subscriptions for your substack some posts are just for paid subscribers, but i try to keep most of them open and i do believe that while the production of history is not free and i am no longer getting a stipend from substack i try my best make it accessible to as many people who want to read it as possible. and a lot of people i see the same email addresses returning to the to the substack, but they don't necessarily subscribe.

and i think some of that has to do with issues they may have with as a, as a company. but i do my best to keep it open. and then you have a day job as well at new america. what is that? i'm a senior fellow at new america. it's my second year there and i'm engaging in a study of the presidency, and that's that's quite uncommon at a bipartisan think tank there. no presidential historians usually, especially those at liberal think tanks and, sometimes a conservative think. and so it's a really exciting endeavor in which i'm thinking widely about how a president should be as. we approach our 250th anniversary. i talk a lot that also on study america last year that manifest did in a 13 study because we had 13 colonies stop tour on how should a president be and i went all all over the country. one of the places i went was the ohio university to a center for

national security, lbj library out of my greatest hits, the ford library. also unexpected places as and it was really fun to be in conversation with people and to be pushing questions past the usual that we ask, you know, every four years about how president should keep themselves in advance an election. and with that day, with being an author, how much time a week you get to spend on your substack the substack is a labor of love that i dip often i return all the time when there's something that i'm thinking that's not an op ed or maybe it supports an op ed. and so if you went into the dashboard of study, mary kelly, you would see that i have maybe 60 posts saved that are partially formed and i just keep working on those. and so it's really to say how much time i spend on them because it's sort of always going and when one is ready to hatch it it is it's it's brought

into the world you talk about the story behind the essay the story behind the book review you reviewed erik larson's the demon of unrest. and in that review you called him the king of d&d history. i went to the story behind the review to find out what that history was. but i find it in the story behind the review what is what is d&d history. yeah. and history is something that readers of study mary cahill and of my biography on george washington my second book you never forget your first would be familiar with d&d history is a genre that i've definitely covered, maybe not in that post, but in many about presidential history, because is the belief that it is only for dads. and i think to a certain extent that's true. but my my goal my my rather big. my goal my rather my, my rather

goal for my george washington biography was to get readers of presidential history who are normally left out of the genre. and so people of color, people who are not dads, women, those are people that publishers do not believe by presidential history or books on war or boats or trains. and i think that they would but there are these gatekeepers and there are certain leaders of that history. and eric is most certainly one of them. and the way that you can tell is very popular in d&d is that around father's day, they get their own table at barnes and noble. you talk about the the sort of gatekeeper powers and these topics that come up. you address some of these topics at at study. mary, kill one of them fairly recently was about mary todd lincoln and the question of whether she was crazy. can you explain? yes. and there was preface to that in

which she is not mary lincoln's lover, identified as mary todd lincoln. s.incoln. mary lincoln, mrs. and abraham lincoln. never mary todd lincoln. what's interesting is william herndon, who lincoln's law partner and had tried to court mary and did not like her and liked when she rejected him and even less so later when he she married abraham lincoln, his law partner. he you said this name after lincoln died and he did speaking tour and he was also a part of this sort of cabal. lincoln's eldest son and only living son at that time to have mary lincoln institutionalized, because her son wanted to run for office. and there was the belief that she was embarrassed. and so a sort of kangaroo court was conducted. she was found guilty, given as evidence was testimony by many

people who had never met or had not interviewed her at all for these purposes, had met her in passing, had met her when husband was dying, when her children had died. so it was not a fair and just trial. and of course, she was out a year later and her son was ruined. yet what remains is this idea that mary lincoln was crazy. and so i try address that. there are certain themes that coming up because just not resolved mary lincoln was crazy president taft never got stuck in the bath. i feel like i will die on that hill. and just so other things that i feel like bears repeating over and over again until i stop seeing them all the time, including in the new york times. when you're doing this personal and certainly faster of presidential history, how much? how much? back checking do you have to go back and do you about your love of end notes, how much how many

notes do you put for your substack posts? how do you go about that process? a fact checking sometimes i offer links, sometimes they citations or areas to look in, books to read. it really depends on the person, but most of them are fact checked through the primary sources, through what's online, what i have in my archives. i will occasionally call in my research assistant to through everything. the first year substack had supply side in editor, which was quite nice and i check it the i will anything i'm turning into an editor at the washington post or the new york times i want to make sure i get everything right before i turn it in. and then because those institutions rarely have fact checkers anymore. and so it is it can the wild west. but i adhere to the standards of my field matter what medium i'm working in. how should the new substack user

go about finding a trustworthy history substack to follow any substack that is written by a historian who is associated with the university, a think tank, some sort of institute is usually and you see who follows them, who recommends them? there is this sort of network that you can check out to make sure that someone is vetted and also if you feel like, they're doing really good work. you read work and it could be interesting even if it's sensational that they support their research with citations, do they have quotes, do they have dates, the who, what, where, when y how never goes of fashion in history? what's one or two history? substack that that you would recommend that you follow? i love i love kevin crusades campaign trails and heather cox richardson of course her letters

to the which is actually not it often is like a news roundup with a bit of history and i find her thoroughness that she applies from our profession to journalism to be really reward as far as getting different approaches, different opinions, different and different conversations that are having that people are having around an issue that's going on right now. it's something that i can trust well if you'll forgive ending new media interview with an old media you've talked about some of the books you've written. you're in the process of writing your third book. what's that about? my third book is called young jack, 1917 to 1957, and it is about of young jfk. we have a lot of books. john f kennedy during his presidency, but we don't have many on his youth and in

particular his years in congress. they treat it like a state. that was my initial social attraction to the subject. i always i would write a book on him. i was in a cnn documentary on him a decade ago. but what's been really fun is i suspected i would find one new thing around his pulitzer prize. and i've actually found three new things in three different parts of his life that i think will really influence way his story is told. and so it's a very exciting time we're it the to hint at one of those new thing one of those new things are i can't but what i will say is you learn about kennedy in war in as a congressman and as an author will really explain quite a lot about what comes later and when does that book out? 20, 26, our 250th. and if of between now and then, if folks want to go your substack, how did they find that they can google study? mary kelly they can go to my

website alexis coe dot com very to find on google alexis coe presidential historian the substack is study mary kill. thanks for spending time with american history tv. thank you. well, matt blumberg podcast over self is a short form podcast featuring presidential historian in each episode. matt blumberg. why is podcasting medium of choice for connecting with history lovers? so pike's for those who might not have listened to a podcast before. you can think of a podcast as almost like a radio show. it's a you know, it's an audio show. but like most things online, it is on demand. so podcast apps, the biggest ones of which are spotify, apple podcasts, amazon podcast apps. let you subscribe to shows or follow shows and any time

there's a new episode, the show, it drops your app. so you turn the app on and it shows you all the new episodes for all the shows you're following. so short and sort of short and medium form audio show the reason i chose podcasting as kind of my channel of choice for the show, it's actually an interesting one because my idea at the beginning was to write a book and i've written a few books before. i've written business books, not history books. and the reason i decided to do this as a podcast instead is because it's it's much less formal to do a podcast than a book. and you don't have to go through the you months and months and months of editing and publishing and. what you get at the end is content that's in micro chunks that's really easy for people to follow, as opposed to a book which is very monolithic when we

say short form micro chunks, how long are each one of your podcasts that you put out the episodes country over self range from 5 minutes to maybe 45 minutes, but for example, i do a podcast for my business called, the daily bolster and most of those episodes are 5 to 7 minutes long. so there's sort of a range around podcasts. i think i've heard of one. it's much less than 5 to 7 minutes. there are some go into a couple hours, but most of the good ones, the ones i like listening to are kind of between 15 minutes and 45 minutes. this podcast over self, the full title defining moments in america. can history explain what you choose to focus on and those moment moments? yeah, absolutely. you i'm going to quote bruce springsteen for second. and you know, i love love his music and i always have. and bruce springsteen said

recently that perhaps not since civil war has this great felt as politically, spiritually, emotionally divided as it does this moment. and it doesn't have to be that way. and goes on to say, the common values, the shared stories that make us, a great and unified nation, are waiting be rediscovered and retold again. so country oversell is an attempt to retell some of our great stories in american history, some of what i call defy owning moments in american history. and you know the hope with it. it's a it's a history podcast, not a politics podcast. i don't talk about any president, for the most part, who's who's still living any ex-president who's still living. so the show is really meant to help rediscover some moments in american history. and, you know, it shows the lens

of kind of tough presidential decision or courageous presidential decisions. where this concept of country self as a way of getting to some of those defining moments. so the podcast is a miniseries. it's going to be 12 or 13 episodes and that's it. it's not to have season one, season two, season three, season. and it's really meant to explore of this topic of country self. have there been presidents have truly made bold and courageous decisions that put themselves at risk? you know in sort of a very politically way so that's the concept of country ever so. what was the first episode? how did you try to hook viewers? well, i did a short trailer, which actually, probably sounds a little bit like what i just said over the last 3 minutes. my first episode or so, each episode focuses on one president frequently focuses on one decision that that president made. and i interview a historian.

i think of myself as a an amateur historian, but i'm actually interviewing a real historian like, the people whose names are on the books on my shelf and, you know, it was an interesting decision about which to go to air first. i think nine out of ten people would have expected that. i would start with george washington. and in fact, there's a lot of rich material about george washington. you know from any any topic, but certainly one about country over self and instead i actually chose to end with george. so that episode has not yet aired as you and i are talking today and it will air in january and. i'll have one concluding episode after that, but will be the last president that i focused on. i decided for the first one to talk about lyndon johnson and the topic of civil rights and i decided to make that one first because lyndon johnson was a very colorful character american history. julian zelizer, the historian

who's a professor at princeton university, who i interviewed, does a lot of tv appearances. he is a great storyteller and a great speaker. and the story of lyndon johnson picking up where kennedy left off and quite frankly, where kennedy had kind of washed out little bit on civil rights and johnson, you know, in some respects was an unlikely of civil rights. he was a southerner in an era where the southerners were the ones blocking civil rights legislation. and for him to assume the presidency and immediately say this is going to be the priority and, i'm going to put myself on the line and get it through. there's there's is there's a great story behind it. and i think civil rights is something that everyone can really understand. it's not an obscure topic matt blumberg mentioned. you're an amateur historian. when did your love of history start? i believe my parents would tell you that i fell in love with

american presidency when i was. four and my mom will tell you that i used to be able to recite the names of every president from washington through. i guess it would have been nixon or ford at the time and very young age. and in fact, when i was a kid, there was a series of of kids books called meet the presidents, sort of one on each kid. and i collected them i read every single one. i read them multiple times. and when i became an adult and, you know, graduated from college, i started reading the grown up version of presidents biographies probably read between 150 and 200 of them at this point, multiple about each president and i've just always been fascinated with that topic. you know by. i say i'm an amateur historian because i'm i'm in business. i'm a technology ceo. and a lot of what i studied professionally is leadership. and so i find the topic of the american presidency, one that kind of dovetails nicely with

with what i do for a living, even though it's not exactly history or politics that sort of lens of leadership. so why you more confident to make your first book about business and not history? because that's what i do all day. so the three business books i've written are, you know, are things that i have have lived, you know, tens of thousands of hours as opposed to just being sort of a side intellectual interest. so for this project, you get to invite on historians who are some of the other historian you've brought on to this podcast. so they've all been, you know historians, largely academic, although not entirely academic. i've had on noah feldman, who joined me to talk about james madison. noah wrote, you know, probably the definitive contemporary biography of james madison i had on h.w. brands, bill brands, talk about fdr alexis coe to talk about washington, sean to talk about lincoln, joseph ellis

to talk about john adams. i mark up to grow, to talk about george h.w. bush and probably my favorite two episodes taken together, kind of back to back were episodes about ford and nixon. and for ford i talked to richard norton smith and for nixon i talked to rick perlstein and the reason i liked those two episodes so much, back to back as they talked about the same material, they talked a lot about the pardon, ford's pardon nixon, but they talked about the about the same incident from a very different perspectives. delve into that more and that defining moment for those two men. yeah mean it was certainly the defining moment of ford presidency the pardon itself and obviously dealt with the defining moment of the nixon presidency and. you know what's so interesting about the two different perspectives is richard horton smith, who is ford's biographer and actuallyulogized ford at

funeral. and i believe at one point was the director of the ford presidential and library. you he has a view that the pardon was one of the most selfless acts. you know, one of those true moments of a president putting country over. so that that you could imagine and that in fact he he sacrificed his future as you know running for office to win the presidency in his own right in 1976 for the good of the country and so that was the perspective of the ford historian the perspective of the nixon was that the pardon terrible for the country and that ford did it to be politically expedient and to get it of his way. and that in fact was not an act of country or self, but that it was a tragic decision that opened the door to future malfeasance from successive administrations that, you know, things could be covered up with

pardons. and it was just fascinating to hear. that same episode covered so differently by by two people, you know, sort of writing about the two characters on each side of it. you mentioned abraham lincoln. so defining moments for lincoln. which one did you pick? yeah, i mean, his presidency was nothing but defining moments. but interestingly, his presidency didn't necessarily feature a lot of country over self moments. mean he was he had what his presidency one theme which was to save the union and the vignette we do have into the defining moment we drove into shotwell on today was emancipation proclamation and you know that's another one where you can view that as as lincoln being a saint you can also view it as lincoln being a shrewd politician and that his emancipation of the blacks was a tactic to win the war and and

actually that was one of professor wilson's his points in the episode was that you misunderstand lincoln. you think of him as a martyred saint and misunderstand lincoln. if you think of him as a shrewd politician because, he was a little bit about what do you know about your audience and the people who download podcast. i don't know, a tremendous amount about them. one of the things that's interesting about podcasting, though, it's not a brand new medium, is that the measurement and the data behind it is still a little bit hodgepodge. so there are platforms that use as a podcast publisher to do a lot of the distribution of your podcast, things like casting or lipson or megaphone and aggregate some of the stats, but then some of them you have to go to individual places like spotify or apple anyway. it's a one a long way of saying i know how many people have episodes and i know some very basics about the demographics. the podcast, which, you know, as

you and i are talking, is about, uh, maybe eight weeks old, nine weeks old has probably had about 30,000 views or downloads at this point. my producer has told me that it ranks in the top 3% of podcasts already, which is kind of shocking to me, but the kind of gratifying at the same time and the demographic, you know, there are a lot of people who are probably like me, you know, sort of middle aged dads who like thousand page books, but it's not exclusively that. and, you know, in fact, there are, you know, more people in the teen than you would have expected. so i think it's it's proving to be an interesting learning tool is it proving to be a moneymaking venture? i didn't do it for that reason and i'm not trying. so there are podcasts that are commercial that part of commercial networks that run ads that make money. i'm not doing with this.

this was really a labor of love and people can also watch as well as listen to this podcast correctly. you put out a video of the conversation. is it via youtube? yeah, exactly. there's a youtube channel that features these. and if you go to country over softcore com, there's a page for each each episode that has the youtube video embedded on it. you know, i find this as a podcast host the conversation is much better when the two of us can actually look at each other and, you know, kind of read each other's body language and, you know, as a result, i had the video decided it would be good to to feature that. and so there've been a decent number of views as opposed to just downloads. but one of the things that's interesting about podcasting is that it's increasingly kind of a multi channel thing. so you're meeting the audience. they are, but you know, you also have opportunity for people to

at clips on linkedin, facebook or tiktok style videos. you know, a lot of times i think people will stop listening in one place and pick it up in another. so it's sort of the beauty of digital media in general. but the podcast format in particular, well listeners will hear a catchy intro music at the beginning of. your podcast, where do you get the music? it's a good question. my producer, fabian had me listen to a whole bunch of clips on soundcloud and which are either free or low cost and with the help of my teenage kids, i zeroed in on that one. what do you think or what do you think of the of of history moving out of the traditional classroom setting, the academic setting, and and these history podcasts, youtube channels taking off? i think it's fantastic. you know, the best and the best historians are the ones that

tell compelling stories and, you know, you can read two biographies of the same president and one of them can put you to sleep and one of them can be a gripping page turner and the reality of the audio media video in some cases is that, you know, it allows for a whole bunch of things that you you don't just get out of a book or a textbook allows for for high impact storytelling. it allows for expert interviews to pop in. it allows for more immersive of experience. and, you know, it lets you go deeper than, you know, sort of dates and facts and get into a context of motivation and choices and impacts. and, you know, i think history is about telling stories. no better way to tell a story than to actually tell the story. matt blumberg its country over self as the name of the pod

cast, an audio focused were you ever into radio? growing up as a kid and being on the radio? i don't think so. i mean, i used to listen to radio, but i'm not sure i ever dreamed of having my own radio show. but doing a podcast, especially if you have the format of interviewing people, which some podcasts but some don't actually, you do feel a little bit like a radio host or you mentioned a second go compelling stories is what you like to tell. you said your last episode going to be about george washington. what's the defining moment for america's first president? well, it's actually going to be the second to last episode. that's the last about a single president. and then i'm going to do a concluding episode where i do a little bit of a round up the entire topic, and i'm going to invite one or more historians to join me to do, you know, kind of a roundtable on the overall topic. but washington, there so many defining moments in his life and in his presidency in particular.

and i think washington in a lot of ways is unique. and it's the reason i put him last as opposed to first but but you know if you about some of the the most impactful decisions he made on future of this you you know start with resigning his military commission which king george. i believe said if he does voluntarily he will be the greatest in the world. move to deciding to come out of retirement, be the first president, which is something he arguably want to do, but felt like it was for the good of the country and to, you know, probably his most famous decision was to not seek a third term and, set a custom that presidents can retire from office as opposed to dying in office or the office on to, you know, their male child. you know, remember the context

of 1789 or 1796 or 1800, what america was doing. and in the american was very different. and washington had so much to do with setting those custom and guardrails that that have really kept the country moving forward. it has for 250 years now, country over self defining moments in american history is the podcast it's available wherever you get your podcasts. matt blumberg is the host thanks for the time on american his