What It Means to Be a Historian in the 21st Century: An Interview with Dan Carlin

“I want to tickle a certain part of your brain, a thinking person’s part of your brain. We don’t really like giving answers on our podcasts. I ask questions.”

On April 12th, podcaster and historian Dan Carlin joined Merion West to discuss his unique approach to studying history, the transition from traditional radio to Internet broadcasting, and the future for how people consume history.

Thank you for joining us today, Mr. Carlin. To begin, what were the major factors that influenced your transition from radio to podcast and internet broadcast?

Well, radio was starting to suck, for lack of a better word. The difference between what it was like to be in radio when I started and what it was like when I was at the end stages of doing it was like night and day because the laws had changed.

When I first started in radio you couldn’t own more than a few radio stations, so most radio stations were owned by small time management people that were probably in the building with you. So you could literally talk to your boss if you wanted to. The people that were working at those stations were unique employees that were tied to the community because the station owners lived there.

Then in 1996 I think, there was something passed called the Omnibus Telecommunications Act, and one of the things it did was lift those requirements on how many stations an owner could own. Very quickly, three or four giant corporations bought almost all of them. You’d have Clear Channel or Cumulus with nine hundred radio stations. All of a sudden, if you were at one of those radio stations, things got a lot more cookie-cutter. You were taking orders from some program directors states away, who were trying to program hundreds of stations all at the same time.