Q&A with The History Chicks on growing their podcast and what’s next
Last updated on January 2nd, 2020
The winner of the Best History Podcast in the 2019 Discover Pods Awards was The History Chicks, which is hosted by Missouri residents Beckett Graham and Susan Vollenweider. Beckett had been frustrated with the lack of online coverage of women’s history. In 2010, Beckett approached her friend Susan – a Kansas City Star columnist and freelance writer – and together over several kitchen table meetings, they created a slightly irreverent podcast and website focused on women’s contributions to history.
Discover Pods sat down with Beckett and Susan to ask about winning the Discover Pods Award, the success of their podcasting strategy and thoughts on the future.
Discover Pods: First, congratulations on winning the 2019 Discover Pods Podcast award for Best History Podcast. You have won other awards for the podcast like being a finalist for the People’s Choice Podcast Award seven consecutive years. Does winning this award validate what you’re doing with the podcast?
A. Thank you, the history finalists were all amazing shows and we were a little surprised that we won. We greatly appreciate winning awards. Just a nomination gives a show exposure and credibility to new listeners and it lets us (and our parents) say, “Award-winning podcast…”
But our validation comes through our listeners. When they tell us that they learned about someone they had never heard of, learned more about someone they thought they knew or listened with their families; when they tell us that our voices kept them company or our subjects inspired them…that’s the ultimate reward; that’s where we get our validation.
Discover Pods: Why create a history podcast focused on the key role women have played in history? Do you find that women’s massive contributions to important historical events are continually overlooked?
A. The show began in the first place when I (Beckett) went looking for women’s history to listen to at work! My shocked self didn’t find what I wanted, so I knew I had to dig in and create something.
As to widespread notice of women’s contributions… it’s getting better! The closer we get to the present, the more information is out there for researchers to dig into. Sometimes, you’re forced to create a woman’s story in relation to the important men in their lives; to sketch the outline. And you can’t reliably fill it in.
Discover Pods: Where do you get your ideas for episodes? How do you research a topic like Wilma Mankiller or Sarah Winchester or Charlotte Bronte?
A. Ideas come from everywhere such as listener suggestions. In fact, the Clara Barton episode was the request of an eight-year-old girl! We also find story ideas from historical anniversaries, chance encounters at the library, or even references to current events. We try to jump around in time and place.
Research takes place independently because we are in different library systems, which helps for novelty! We use a birth-to-death format. If we can see primary sources (letters, photos) we always take advantage of that. Librarians and museum curators are invaluable resources. We’ve been known to call across the globe for details or pronunciation help. Beckett remembers having *literally* a duffel bag of books for Jackie Kennedy.
Discover Pods: You have a London excursion planned for next year with listeners invited. How did that all come about?
A. We had been approached by group travel agents before and always politely declined. We had too many questions and it seemed like a lot of work that we don’t have the time, or experience, for. But when Laura Hart of Like Minds Travel contacted us, she was obviously a listener and proposed a trip to London with a suggested itinerary of places that we had already talked about in the show! Jane Austen’s house? Blenheim Palace of Gilded Age Heiresses fame? Victoria and Albert Museum? Yes, please! We gave her a list of more that we wanted to visit and she managed to get them all into nine days. When we got excited and thought, “That’s the kind of vacation I want!” we went for it. It sold out within just a few days and there’s a very long wait-list. Guess we weren’t the only ones who wanted to see those places.
Discover Pods: What was your learning curve for podcasting? How did you get so comfortable as co-hosts of the show?
A. The learning curve was nearly vertical! When we were in the planning stages (2010), there were nowhere near the resources that are available today. A friend of Beckett’s at NASA helped write our RSS feed (the file that allows listeners to subscribe). Perhaps this was the ignorance is bliss department!
We were online friends for a couple of years and knew that we were very different but got along well in writing. When we met in person (over pie, we have a thing for pie) we clicked. Mutual respect, appreciation of differing life experiences, plenty of similarities, and an understanding of each other’s strengths got us comfortable together very quickly.
Discover Pods: What was the thought process on creating the mini-casts? Are you pleased with the reception?
A. You’re giving us a lot of credit for something that wasn’t planned. When we covered Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the Little House on the Prairie series, we wanted to talk about the books themselves. But our format is about the woman’s life, birth to death, and stopping to talk about the books took us away from that storyline, so we recorded it separately. Then we shot ourselves in the foot from a numeric standpoint: We titled her biography, Episode Two: Laura Ingalls Wilder, and called the book conversation a “minicast”. It seemed like a simple way to differentiate between the two so we kept it up for other subjects…and now, nine years later, we are on “Episode 141” but really have closer to 200 episodes posted.
The only adverse reception to them is when we covered the Netflix series Anne with an E as minicasts to our coverage of Anne of Green Gables author, Lucy Maud Montgomery. People weren’t mad, but they come to the podcast to hear biographies, not fact v. fiction media recaps. One mini-cast was cool, a whole television series of them wasn’t what people subscribe to hear. We understood and started our second show, The Recappery, as a place to host media-based conversations and whatever non-women’s biography idea we might have.
Discover Pods: You both do an excellent job monetizing the podcast via books, events, merchandise and paying sponsors. How have you been successful in this area?
A. It’s interesting that you see it that way, we don’t. Yes, we do have those income streams, and are grateful that we do, but we didn’t begin the show to generate income and we don’t continue it with that as a primary focus. Any success we have monetizing is because we put the most work into creating each episode, with good content comes listeners (or so the theory goes.) The most effort we put into monetizing is accepting sponsors, events. We reject advertisers if they don’t have a product or service we believe in; we turn down speaking offers if they interfere with our recording schedule. We assume our listeners are like us so if we like something or think it will be fun, they will, too. And then we turn our attention back to our women.
Discover Pods: How do you like being part of Wondery?
A. It’s wonderful! We had been happily partnered with Panoply for three years and Wondery was one of the networks that contacted us as soon as Panoply announced that they were shifting their business direction and we were free agents, so to speak. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a huge transition to a different network, the folks at Wondery made it very easy and we immediately felt like part of the “family.”
Discover Pods: Where would you like to see The History Chicks two years from now?
A. That’s funny. Podcasting is still such a new medium that we’re only looking ahead twp years? We didn’t really see ourselves where we are now two years ago, so that’s a tricky question to answer. We’re always working to improve the show from research to discussion to editing and any other technical aspect, so the overall quality of the show will be improved in two years just like it’s improved over the last two years. We hope to have all of our back-catalog remastered to the best quality possible. So much has changed since our bubblegum, baling wire and NASA code days when that early audio was created. We would love to branch into other mediums, but primarily, we hope to be able to meet–live and in person! –with more of our listeners. Two years ago, that list was small, almost non-existent, and now it’s fairly sizable but not because we said, “Let’s do live shows and get out to meet people.” While we focus on the next episodes, opportunities present themselves and, maybe, we try them. See? Tricky question.
*****
Beckett Graham and Susan Vollenweider – a.k.a. The History Chicks – exemplify the best podcasting has to offer. When you read their responses here, it’s obvious that they embody a collective passion to inform people about the significant contributions women have made to history. Moreover, they’ve forged an unique bond with their listeners who feel energized by their fascinating stories of how women made this world a better place.
That certainly is one key reason why The History Chicks was voted Best History Podcast. Like so many podcasters, telling a story that needs to be told – like how important women have been throughout history – is why The History Chicks transformed a kitchen table meeting over pie into a history podcast that attracts a sizable slice of the listener pie.
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