Live from Denver, It's Saturday Night!
Recapping the very first HATM Podcast Live event
Good morning y’all. It’s a good thing I am typing this because I damn sure can’t really speak right now. My voice is absolute toast. And I have only you to thank.
Last night we held the very first HATM Podcast Live event at Wynkoop Brewery in downtown Denver. We were there as the culminating event of the Society of United States Intellectual History Conference at the invitation of Andrew Hartman, Ray Haberski, and HATM favorite, Sara Georgini. Our guest, of course, was my amazing friend Kathleen Belew, who had really brainstormed both the idea of being at the conference and the film we talked about, Red Dawn.
In some ways, the live version of the Podcast signifies a shift in direction for the HATM live events. We’d done a few of the Sunday night watch parties, but I felt the results were diminishing. Many undergraduate students have turned away from twitter altogether, either based on notions of dislike towards Elon Musk, preference for social media platforms such as Tik-Tok or Snapchat, or a general feeling that Twitter isn’t cool anymore. Coupled with the ideas that many faculty members simply haven’t embraced social media or forward-facing scholarship, and thus lacking a real push within departments to get students out there, we just weren’t getting the turnout we needed for me to justify the cost of hosting these events.
Hosting a live version of the podcast offered a new opportunity to explore different ways we can talk about the past and how it relates to our own lives in a new format. But we’d never tried this version of a conversation before, and I was more than a little nervous about failing to perform in front of everyone. Fortunately we had an amazing audience in that most of the folks from the conference poured into the brewery, along with a bunch of HATM fans from the region. I attribute this to the efforts of Ray, Andrew, Sara, and Kathleen, who pumped the pod every chance they could. We also had a birthday party and bridal party that was there at Wynkoop who decided to be good sports and stick around for the event.
I don’t know what our numbers were but I’d say we had almost two hundred people in attendance last night. In the upstairs of a brewery. On a Saturday. In Denver. When the world champion NBA team was playing in an arena just a few blocks down the street. I think it was a real win.
We learned a lot about how to do these in the future. Step one: have a brilliant guest like Kathleen as your cohost. Step two: control the environment. If there was a downside, it’s that the place was so loud between ambient noise and not the best audio equipment that it was hard to project over the crowd, hence the hoarseness. As a result we won’t have a live version of the episode available on the pod, but Kathleen and I are already scheduling a tradition recording session so we can give you a version of last night’s event.
That said, I think it was a real win for everyone, and I came away thinking that a passion for history and pop culture remains. I want HATM to be at the very center of those conversations. And this community makes me believe that it can be.
To those who think history is dead, I say come see us live.
HATM Podcast news
The pod is taking a two week break to allow intrepid producer Fletcher Powell and I a little time to enjoy the holidays but we’ll have new episodes for you shortly. In the meantime, I’ll continue to share some of the older episodes that you may have missed. I’ve got a few favorites deep in the stack.
However, you can check out this week’s podcast with Wayne E. Lee below. In only four days it has become our fifth most downloaded episode ever. Simply incredible.
A few of you have asked how you can support the podcast. I’ve probably been bad about that aspect of this, so thank you for the reminder. For now you can make a pledge here on substack for a monthly or yearly subscription, which will help the maintenance of the website and some expansion stuff we’d like to do in the coming year. Plus, intrepid producer Fletcher Powell is expecting another addition to the family soon and it would be nice to get him something. As you probably figured out, I’ve been stepping up with my writing here, so I’ll start to post some exclusives for those of you who would like to help.
HATM
Finally, tune in tonight at 8 eastern to talk about another Colorado movie, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, which is somehow actually based on a true story. It’s available on Netflix and we hope to see you there.
Alright, that’s it for now. Thanks for being part of this community. Talk at ya soon.
-J