Update on 77 Chapter 7 and other exciting things

           Well, here we are again. After some thought I decided a short update episode was an order to tell you all about when the next chapters of the main series are coming out. More than that, this podcast has seen enormous growth and changes in this past year and so I thought I’d tell you all about them. As you know the podcast got picked up by the media company Evergreen whose support has allowed me to go full-time producing more content than ever. Since joining them I decided I would release one episode every single week for this year. It’s been a daunting task, especially since I’ve made multiple main series episodes that were over an hour-long but with support from them and you I’ve had quite the fire in my belly.

            First, let me tell you what I know you all want to hear, which is that the main series is my top priority. I know it’s been a month since I released chapter 6 and it will be at least a few weeks before 7 comes out. This has been due to a number of very good things happening in my life and some not so great, but all of which took up a measure of my time and mental capacity.

            Since I’ve already signed the contract I suppose I am free to tell you now that Routledge, the largest academic publisher in the world and enormously respected across disciplines, is publishing my book. Based on my dissertation, this upcoming book details the development of mass governmental surveillance in WWI-era France and Britain, demonstrating how Western systems of governmental observation and control formed and laid the foundation for the modern all-seeing state. As you can imagine I have been quite busy working on the final edits for the book and managed to turn them in on 1 September. There are still some formatting issues to deal with but it is nearing the end of this long-drawn process. The agents I’ve been working with expect the book to come out in hardcover sometime next year with a paperback and possible e-book version following that. The hardcover is geared towards university audiences and is expected to have a price tag of around $130, so if you are a high-roller feel free to check it out. If not, you can request it through your library or just wait until a cheaper version comes out.

            Getting a book published by a major academic press is the ultimate dream of every academic. I feel so fortunate to be able to say I am doing just that. While I might just drop academia for the FHP, it is so affirming knowing that I have achieved the highest accomplishments academia has, something which I will be sure to tell any of my interviewers in case I go back onto the collapsing higher-ed job market.

            Another major change has been the creation of the FHP’s own Youtube channel. I probably should have been uploading to Youtube in the first place given that it has over a billion regular users, but I always felt like my show did not quite fit given that it was audio only. As such I have started making videos as well. If you go to The French History Podcast on Youtube you can easily find a playlist with 7 videos. Each of these are adaptations of podcast episodes but with a video element. The earliest ones are very simple, barely more than a slide-show with images of maps, historical photos, paintings and pictures of artifacts to help bring each topic to life. The final one is a video I am immensely proud of though, and which is entitled, “What happened to the French Communist Party?” This video includes multiple newsreels from the 1940s to 1960s, and is a big step forward in my budding documentarian catalog. If you just want to listen to my relaxing, sleep-inducing voice I understand, but as part of my efforts to expand the show I have been working very hard to bring it to a whole new audience while improving it with video elements when I can.

            Another big change to the show, and which should hit soon are collaborative projects between myself and other similar podcasters. These will be relatively rare, though when applicable Evergreen has tried to create dream teams of historians with overlapping topics. Over the next few weeks I am debuting three episodes with Fabulously Delicious, a podcast all about French food. I am delivering my own episode about the Paris of Thomas Jefferson, and how this very important Founding Father experienced the City of Lights just before the Revolution. Then, Fabulously Delicious will provide an episode on how Jefferson helped popularize French food back in the US. Then the two of us will come together and discuss how we come to love France, its history and just talk about the good life. That should be the last big chunk of episodes before I bring us back to the main series.

            Oh, and on that note, let me just say a quick word on the Feed Drop episodes. This year I’ve posted 3 episodes from other podcasts within the Evergreen family that deal with French history. Each of these comes from fantastic shows which I encourage you to listen to. However, in future I am thinking I’ll do at most 2 feed drops a year and more spaced out in future since I don’t want to clutter your feed.

            There is one final thing that delayed Episode 77 Chapter 7 and that is that I got Covid. After 4 years of dodging the sickness it finally got me, and it was not fun. For about 8 days I could barely sleep, either due to fever, chills, fever and chills, congestion, and extreme pain in my sinuses and throat. I pretty much over it, but as you can imagine it set me back quite a bit.

            So, that’s most of the updates. I know that the primary draw of this show is the main series. As a fan of Mike Duncan’s the History of Rome, I get it: there is nothing like a grand story. Believe me when I say that I have done everything I can to prioritize it, even as I have made time for guest episodes and interviews as part of my effort to produce an episode every single week. In the next few weeks expect the collaboration between myself and Fabulously Delicious and possibly one or two more specials but afterwards not only will I have another main series episode but my goal is to produce them more regularly. I’m also giving them priority in the lineup, so even if I have 3 guest episodes on Patreon and then record another main series episode for the next few months whenever I finish a main series episode it becomes the next one I will release regardless of its position in the queue.

            My second priority behind the main series is my patrons-exclusive episodes. You know it is funny, I had originally planned to have a different theme for exclusive episodes every year. The plan was to do roughly two to three hour-long episodes on the Louvre, Mont St. Michel, the Eiffel Tower and the other wonders of France in 2022. Well it’s 2023 and the Louvre series is currently 12 chapters long, or roughly ten hours, with three more episodes planned. This whole series has ballooned into something I could not have even imagined. This is all because the Louvre really is one of the world’s all-time great monuments; unlike the Egyptian pyramids or the Parthenon, which were built earlier and then left without any major function, the Louvre was regularly the center of art, culture and politics within Paris, France, Europe and even in the world on-and-off for eight centuries. So far I have released two episodes to the public, the prologue and Chapter 12 and I truly think this is my greatest work so far. Once I’ve published a number of main series episodes and set our boys off to crusade I am going to finish up the Louvre audiobook and hopefully get started on Mont St. Michel before Covid 25 comes out.

            I like to think that I am the hardest-working history podcaster there is. Anyone who scrolls to the bottom of each episode knows that we are one of the few shows that provides full transcriptions for the hearing-impaired and ESL. If you keep scrolling you’ll see the sources list where you’ll see that I regularly read multiple books and articles for every single main series episode, even those that under 20 minutes long. I really have been putting everything into this, but I know what I make isn’t always what you want. I know you want me to get to Joan of Arc before the Apocalypse happens, and Napoleon before the PlayStation 6 comes out. I get it, and I am going to return to it with more vigor than ever before. Thank you to everyone for your patience and support. Everyone who joined our patreon, subscribed on Youtube or to the podcast feed, everyone who follows us across social media and who tells their friends and family about us, thank you so much as you keep us going. This year has been by far the best year for this show ever and I am working very hard to be able to say that about every single year. I knew when I started this project it was going to be a Herculean task but I’ve had fun with it so far and that’s all thanks to you. Here’s to all the great stories to come. With that, I guess I’ll go back to writing about which crusader is going to die horribly in an upcoming episode.