Scotichronicast

I am so disappointed that I found this podcast after it stopped running. I found it by accident because I heard Dr. Michelle Beer on another podcast and when I looked what other shows she had been on the “Scotichronicast” came up. Dr. Kate Buchanan interviews researchers of medieval Scottish history in their area of expertise every episode and it was fascinating to learn about Scotland. This podcast really did cover everything from Royalty to timber used for building. A great listen if you love history and want to learn more about Scotland in particular.

I was very excited to discover this podcast because there aren’t very many popular works on medieval Scottish history. The problem is, there’s very little history covered in this podcast! The host and guests spend most of the program talking about how they discovered their love of history and career paths. While they're all very likable, that’s just not what I’m here for and there are only so many times I can listen to academics talking about choosing their major or browsing in libraries before I check out. If they spent that same amount of time talking about the sources they used, their research methods, or writing process that would be one thing— but I feel like I’m listening to the same anecdotes over and over again. I’m going to keep listening because I hope this is just a matter of a new podcast trying to figure out what it wants to be. As it stands, it would probably appeal to people contemplating post graduate studies— unfortunately for this podcast, that’s going to be a fairly limited audience. I really hope they can focus more on the content of the guests’s research rather than the guests themselves. We’re all here because we love history— our origin stories aren’t that different. We have haven’t all been so privileged as to study a difficult subject with scarce sources in doctoral programs— that’s the content I’d love to access that I can’t get anywhere else.

I listened to two episodes and couldn’t take anymore. Maybe it gets better but my experience is similar to the two other reviewers who wrote that they expected a podcast about history and heard instead researchers chatting about their experiences as students, how they got into studying history, laughing at stories about professors they learned from, etc. My patience finally ran out. I didn’t learn a single thing about castles, medieval history, or Scotland. I did learn that the host recently had a baby and that one of the interviewees was really intimated by a professor who always had great research topics in a desk drawer but he ended up being a great professor and not a person to be intimated by. There’s a lot - a LOT - of laughing at things I didn’t find funny. That’s all I remember.

I’m only two episodes in and I want to rate this higher (and maybe I will after the next few episode) but it’s not the podcast I expected. As someone who counts myself as a medievalist, I adore this podcast. I studied for my MSc in Medieval Studies at Edinburgh. And I love hearing about the journeys of the guests... but I want to hear more about the actual subjects. Isabella of Mar gets only a few brief mentions. So while I like hearing about studying and how each guest came to be a medievalist, I’d rather hear more about the subject.