History podcasts have been part of the DNA of podcasting from its earliest days. There are some terrific independent history podcasts such as Why Wars Happened and 'Tis But A Scratch: Fact and Fiction About the Middle Ages.
There are similarities between a history podcast and biography podcast, yet the subtle differences are distinctive. History podcasts deal with events from a broad scale, while a biography focuses on a person in history.
One of the best biography podcasts, which is an independent podcast, is called Byte Sized Biographies.
Byte Sized Biographies has a complete title, which is "Some Very Famous People You've Never Really Heard of, the Famous, the Infamous and the Quirky in Less Than An Hour."
The creator / host of the podcast, Philip Gibbons, explains: "I take that five-hundred-page book that you will acquire with the best of intentions but never read and reduce it to a compelling, less than sixty-minute podcast. My subjects include Alexander Hamilton, Edgar Allan Poe, Amelia Earhart, Billy Holiday, Ernesto Che Guevara, Bob Marley as well as lesser-known folks like Kempton Bunton, who stole Goya's Duke of Wellington from London's National Gallery, Ludwig II, builder of Neuschwanstein, and Elvis Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker."
Mr. Gibbons must be doing something right, since the podcast has passed 150 episodes.
The website is someveryfamouspropledotcom for more information about the podcast and the subjects of its episodes.
Creator/Host Philip Gibbons enjoyed a successful career as a business development executive, before becoming a documentarian and free-lance journalist, Gibbons. He
also worked for ten years as a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School
System and graduated from Brown University with a degree in European
History.
Here are some examples of Gibbons' journalism, ranging from internet content to traditional published journalism:
Ranker.com content
In 2013, Mr Gibbons released the documentary, “The Devil and the Death Penalty” which chronicles the dysfunction within the California capital punishment system by revisiting the case of Lawrence Bittaker, a convicted serial child killer and rapist who has been on death row at San Quentin since 1981. More information about this film can be found here: The Devil and the Death Penalty
The Devil and the Death Penalty received a Silver Ace Award from the 2012 Las Vegas Film Festival and was the winner of the 2013 San Francisco United Film Festival’s Best Documentary Feature award.
Gibbons was also a contestant on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire on August 13th & 15th, 2000. He walked away with $500,000.
The podcast's format is straightforward, with appropriately weighty intro music and then Gibbons introducing his subject of the episode. Often, a biographical subject may span several episodes, like Teddy Roosevelt in December 2024. At the end of each episode, Gibbons reviews his sources and offers recommendations for listeners who wish to learn more.
I like Gibbons's respect for listeners' time by keeping each episode under an hour. In that hour, Gibbons extracts the most information possible in that under 60-minute time frame.
My favorite episodes are the ones on Johnny Carson, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ian Fleming.
Check out Byte Sized Biographies. It's an independent podcast that is scrupulously researched, narrated flawlessly, and timed perfectly.
"What a mistaka to maka" ... Ian Fleming didn’t know what a secret agent really was! Fleming dubbed James Bond a "secret" agent yet simultaneously depicted 007 as an employee on MI6's payroll. You may say "so what" because Bond is fiction. So is Postman Pat but his creator John Cunliffe never called him an Uber or Deliveroo courier.
ReplyDeleteNow an MI6 secret agent would never have: (1) been an employee on MI6’s payroll who took holidays and submitted expense claims etc; (2) reported directly to the Head of MI6, had annual appraisals and been on extremely familiar terms with many other MI6 employees such as Q or Moneypenny; (3) been a frequent visitor to MI6 HQ and other MI6 buildings; and (4) even used his own name when he met ministers et al in Whitehall.
Given Ian Fleming's background in British naval intelligence in World War 11, that contradictory classification of 007 was about as absurd as calling a Brain Surgeon a Hair Dresser or a Navy Seal a Coastguard as noted in the latest intriguing news article in TheBurlingtonFiles (advert free) website.
To quote from the article ... "As for 007 being “secret”, ... since everybody knew ... his favourite drink was shaken not stirred, I’m surprised he wasn’t poisoned more often … especially as he insisted on letting everyone know his name was “Bond, James Bond”! Perhaps Bond’s true skill lay in being so conspicuously ostentatious that no one believed he could genuinely be a spy!
Thank you for your incisive comments. You obviously have strong feelings about Mr. Bond.
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